Brown Bird VIII

The world should have stopped…but it didn’t. The world kept turning, Spanish moss kept blowing in the trees, Ricky the parking attendant still sat at her station dolling out parking passes and citations, Mo—still sat at the counter of the bookstore slowly turning pages of her latest horror novel, Crysta still and dipped her mags into fresh thimbles for more True Blue ink, and Jimmy upstairs sat in his folding chair lighting a freshly unwrapped Swisher just for a few moments of silence from the screaming children. 

My world stopped. I noticed. Every clock broke, then I broke. I cleaned you up, and sat up with you all night listening to you struggle to breathe. I carried you to the backseat of the car and drove in silence…taking every extra turn I could. I struggled to sleep when after locking the door, I turned around to a bare mattress…and realized for the hundredth time that you were gone—that there was no one to sit with and kiss good night. I’m the one who hallucinated you shuttling around in the night and woke—to remind myself that you…still weren’t here. 

I did what I could and maybe it wasn’t enough, I don’t know. But the world should have noticed. It should’ve noticed that one of God’s gifts slipped away from us without so much as a whimper.