evening

 The darkness has set, firm and obdurate in the window. The blind dog snuffles around the room. My mother drags herself in her transport chair down the hallway, bumping and scooting her way into the bathroom. All the lights are off in the room where I sit, squandering my time on heavy thoughts and fantasy. The hour early, and it’s already too late. I am waiting, always waiting, though already left behind.

It slips away before you notice. You realize they’re leaving once they are already gone. The months go by, each day taking a little more, until it’s almost October and it’s only chores and distractions that fill your time. Disease and fascism scour the land, and you sit quietly with your broken brains and your daffy heart, soaking in poor mes. Ignoring your health has caught up at last, pain and malfunction the report of your body and your limbs. Over only grows more awful, once you realize that the horror of it is that you will die in plain sight. They all know, they all notice. This inaction and apathy is all you will get.

The eldest cat has taken the bed, gnawing at his fleas as the dogs run riot. The children next door shout and scream on their shadowed porch. I wait for my mother to finish with her evening routine, to wheel her to bed and settle her in for the night. It’s one of the few things I still do in the world. Attend to pets and family, lock and unlock doors, turn light on and off again. There’s no real need for me to be here. There’s no one that wants it to be me. This is just the way things have settled, one step at a time, one ill thought out concession to the necessary. Shunned and unloved, waiting for sleep to take me. Alone and abandoned to another unwanted waking into this fault of mine alone.