Postmortem

This restlessness has grown, has grown past the bounds I'd set for it. Death to the soul, they chant. It's like the spiritual realm has come back to haunt me. Ghosts, deathly white, appear in my dreams. I've devoted fond memories to you. On the beaches of Brazil, I remembered you. Like a vision. And I fed a starving being whose gratefulness overcame me, overcame desire. There he was, withered, withering. There they were, vultures, perched, waiting, scoping the situation. Junior, Michael, Cassio, Edison, Jeffery, Rafael, countless others. Now they are a haunted memory.

I search, gasping, taking in gulps of air. He branded me the toughest of the tough but I think I'm unworthy of the title. Perhaps I will just go to Canada. Again and again will I go back to that I have left behind me. I'm confused about where home is. Home has split into several. Everywhere I go, they ask me where I'm from. Yes, I can marry you. Mary.

I can't believe a year has passed like a whirlwind. I went back and he had not a word to say. You may return, c'est tout. Of all my past loves, the Belgian was the cruelest, the least genuine. He was also the one I latched onto like a leech, unforgiving. Leave him be, they said. I clung on, for his mother, for his sanity, a saviour, always a saviour.

But tell me this. Once I've saved you, restored you to health, what do you do? You take flight and shit on my head.

And then on the one year and two day anniversary, I saw a vision. Perhaps it was a sign. It reminded me the Universe appreciates me. But it was stolen from me as quickly as it was offered to me. It took flight to rest with the Angels, Mary, Austin, El Salvador, from this country.

The Turks offered not much besides polite introductions, the Iraqis were too taken by themselves, the French - well, what can I say? Canadians, they were stuck in eternal humiliation for being Canadian. And I wondered what I'd have to offer to the Universe to get this in return. Bring to me - something, something more. I read in a tale well known how I must heed the omens. Am I? South America beckons yet I remain, perched, wise, cautious.

And then he died. He took with him hope, he took with him more of her dying laughter, he took with him the purpose of an old woman. He left with me fear, fear of my fate, fear of old age, fear in which I sit and it consumes me.