Decay - Oliver Cother

Decay

By Oliver Cother

i remember sitting and letting tears fall down my cheeks; those tears soaked my socks as i was sitting-i was sitting cross legged and begging, i was begging to stay at the hospital because even though i hated the smell, hated the cold, hated the looks of pity i got from adults, my mother was there.

and for memories so fuzzy they are awfully clear. it’s like wiping down a mirror after a shower and staring at yourself through streaks of condensation, the white of the bathroom wall blaring behind you and everything comes flooding back, and my own tears soak everything.

they say home is where the heart is but i really, really i don’t, i don’t think that a hospitable can be a home especially not when you are sitting in the comfy chair of the hospital room days after your thirteenth birthday. maybe not a birthday, maybe an anniversary, an anniversary of how long you had been with your mom, an anniversary of love, maybe a last. my memories of those days are cracked. maybe just as cracked as the mirror i broke in a dream maybe i might start believing those myths because if watching your mother die on the hospital bed, drool sliding down her fevered skin isn’t unlucky, then frankly, i don’t know what is.

one of the clearest memories from those days is also the foggiest. because i wouldn’t stop crying, i wouldn’t stop crying after they told me i was too young, and too young my ass because i was barely thirteen and watching my mother die. they told me to go home for the night, because i was too young to sleep at the hospital but maybe home is where the heart is because my house wasn’t a home without my mother. it wasn’t home, ever again, not after she died. sometimes i still long for a warm embrace but then i have to remember that she’s not here and it was somehow easier, yet harder, when i could still climb the stairs and visit her room of what was home again when i was chest deep in memories of her, but i can’t do that anymore because we moved and i can’t do it here because she never got to see the new house.

and it’s funny, because i didn’t get to see her ever again maybe it’s not funny but people always say that, when somethings not funny so i always say that it’s funny that she passed exactly a week after my birthday. i always say it’s funny she never got to say goodbye to me, because she was already too far gone by the time i woke up. i always say its funny how i wasnt aloud to stay with my mother for her last, dying moments and i wish i fought harder because my memories of her are starting to decay, just like her body not even a month after my thirteenth birthday

isola By Kyla Hughes

Photo by Van Pui