vanishing

mortality is not about vanishing, it’s about deterioration & you are utterly unprepared, i promise. i could eat every strand of hair on her head & there still wouldn’t be enough of her dna in me to make her live forever. could i replicate her cheekbones if i replicate myself? could i breed her wisdom into a new life form? wilting isn’t all at once, it slips in bits & pieces but still remains edible even though it can no longer recall its initial form, its original purpose. how much of yourself can you lose & still be who you are? i never learned to crochet but it remains it remains it remains. & everyone holds her echoes in their tight throats, in their open palms but my fists are clenched, unable to begin the process of letting go & it is too early, all this borrowing grief from the future but she would tell me time isn’t linear & all the grief there ever was has always been, we’re borrowing it from each other, not from time. & we’re not borrowing the time either. it was never held, never coveted. just a mist rolling off the sea foam & across the sand right into our open mouths & what we don’t cough out sticks to our lungs & turns our organs to mountains. solidifying what existed there before & after & during & all the photo albums will turn yellow & so will my teeth & the whites of my eyes because i cannot cry out the ether that eats me from toes to top & back down again. i cannot build a drip castle that does not wash away in the tide, i cannot love a life that will not drip away in the tide. humbling the way mortality slinks & waves & swallows, the chewing slow & steady & rarely with kindness or quickness. i have her face but all i do is turn it to the moon so i don’t have to feel the burn of another tomorrow bringing us closer to an end i cannot even stomach, nonetheless embrace & i know i know i know it’s all getting ahead of it & we must breathe in the steadiness of today before slurping the spoiled milk that tomorrow holds but i cannot stop seeing her fate so twisted & wrenched up unwinding before me. i cannot stop holding out my hand to a god that has never held out a hand to my mother.