The Dying Body Chronicles 15: A god hears

content warning: references to drugs, drug paraphernalia, suicide & sex.

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I was dangerous—folded napkins & table knife, fingernails & teeth. I swung into the room like a jungle, penis swinging, alpha male, square jaw fixed, eyes glittering, receding hairline. Did you see me? The loudness of revving engines, lines snorted on office tables, a secretary here, a typist there.

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Pixabay

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The cannabis slowed me, then paused me before the water cooler—thirst & munchies reverberating through bone marrow & song. My boss was talking but I couldn't hear him. He smelled like old flowers dying in arid vases. Gosh, look how soft his suit felt & how hard his chest through the fabric. I was on my ass on the street, corner office & yearly bonuses out of the window.

Homeless, I wandered from needle to pipe, from blunt to cigarette smoke. Can't remember my childrens' faces & I have not eaten any solid food for a week. Understand that I'm dangerous & everyone had fled. Sold this body to score some high. They could do whatever they wanted with it as I sailed the eternal high, searching for god, listening to sad songs. My body was broken into pieces of meat. I became nothing but silence & acceptance. I waited for god to come, take me.

It was a morning, a chattel lying on a strange bed, feeling sick from all the liquor & chemicals melting my blood, unsure of my name. The room revolved & old music seeped into my pores like sunlight. A piano peeled open my flesh & the white bones of my trauma were laid bare. I wept. I wept for everything I had become & all I have lost then I lit the blunt I found on the dresser & continued the damage.

She wandered into the room, tired & weary body hoarding a young soul. She has food & juices on a tray. I watched her black body filter the slow entry of morning light, how the dust motes swirled as she moved & the dew curling like smoke from a fallen god's pipe. Then she smiled, catching my eyes & maybe it was the weed, maybe it was the hangover, but she was complete as a body could be. She clambered into the bed, took the blunt from me, took a drag & asked to save me. Permission granted, claws clipped, flaws flipped, I had a bath, had breakfast & the rehabilitation began.

You should have seen how hard she tried. You should have seen how hard I failed. She loved me but maybe she saw something in me that was dead in truth. She did her best but it wasn't enough. I fled rehab one night & soon I was lost in the pyrotechnics of a world beyond reality. I laid there staring into the recesses of my bruised mind in horror, foam on my lips, flies on my eyes. I woke up in the hospital, pumped awake, another god averted, her eyes staring at me in sadness.

"What are you fleeing from?" She asked.

I swallowed to find my throat sore from a lot of throwing up. I was allowed a sip. She stayed with me all through the weeks I spent in the hospital trying to wake my body to life. One day I asked her

"Why do you care so much?"

"I know what it means to have no one, to be forgotten, to become invisible because of the choices we've made. I want you to know that you are not invisible. I see you, babe," she said.

I looked at her, really looked at her & I saw her. She wasn't weary. She was strong. She was also trying to save me all by herself. I wasn't even helping.

"I'm running. This is the easiest way I know to get any god to hear me scream my pain," I said.

"Well which of them has heard you?" She asked.

I thought about it. I thought about it long. I was discharged & back at her place, watching her move around nude, the weight of age on her beautiful body, the curves & ripples of her skin, the laughter in her step, the constant hunger for life in her eyes. The moon light wrapped her & I finally had my answer.

"Maybe they answered me, I just didn't hear," I said.

"What?" She asked.

"You are the answer to my prayers," I replied.

You should have seen her smile. You should have seen those eyes light up, you should have heard the heaven in her voice when she said,

"Awww baby. That is so corny & sweet,"

It is fifteen years since that day & she still is the answer to each & every prayer. She is my mother, my friend, my lover, my goddess worshipped each second. She is my breath, the heaving in chest & that is all to the tale. But I still broke her heart, you hear. At the end, she could not save me. Even as the blood filled me up with hope then gathered my tired feet from under me, I knew she would have kept on saving me if I let her. But she was older now. She needed to rest too, to be cared for & there were kids to do that now.

I left one night to get batteries & it was a cold night. I was almost sleeping on my feet as I walked back when I felt the knife find my liver, then my heart & the clack clack of my god finally come. It was a sad thing but I think we had the best time. That is all there's to the tale. Yes the gods did hear me & I was saved. That is enough. It has to be enough. Take care friend.

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