Page 102 of Undertow

“One day you will,” I lie. My voice is raspy with each labored breath. “Sorry. The flu.”

I need to hang up. This was a mistake. I knew it the second I picked up the phone, but I couldn’t stop myself this time. I’m too weak. Too fucking broken.

Falling. Plummeting.

Disintegrating.

“Oh no! The flu? No wonder you sound so bad. I’m sorry, son. I wish I was there. I’d make you my famous lemon chicken casserole.”

“Your awful lemon chicken is the last thing anyone should eat when they’re sick… or ever,” I force out.

He chuckles. “You always were a picky eater.”

The silent tears are streaming now, soaking the pillow like my blood did last night.

Murky memories seep in.

Raucous laughter. A dizzying clamor of voices and words I can’t decipher. Hands on me, guiding me… somewhere. I don’t know where.

But youdoknow where. You fucking know.

The sobs are clogging my throat now. Choking out every last gasp of air as they claw their way toward the one person who would care. The only person who’s ever cared.

The one who can never know any of this.

I hang up.

Sorry, roommate just got home. Call you later,I text instead.

The phone rings in reply.

And rings.

And rings.

But the sound is lost in the violent sobs wrenching from my chest.

I yank the blanket over my head and let the darkness take me home.

There is no pretty way to say that my faith is decaying and the moss is consuming my lungs. I have watched myself change from promise to soil and bury my heart back beneath the surface.

My breath has been silenced under the weight of the wind and my words have long left and been swept into clouds that bring rainy days to other worlds of pain. Mobile only at the will of the hands on the clock as time grinds at my body with heartbreak and rock turning sentiment to sediment washed away by rain drops, no life left in me to even ask you to stop.

I need sunshine and singing and nurture and time,

I need the hands of my God to assemble my spine.

-JD December 14

20

SENTIMENT TO SEDIMENT

“Shaw?”

I hear a word. A name. But it’s not mine. Or is it mine? What the fuckismy name, anyway? Does anyone know?

Pain radiates from every corner of my body. My heavy eyelids barely lift more than a sliver.

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