Don't

by Flavia M. Lobo

No! don’t take that thing off my feet I’m freezing I want to open my eyes but can’t the eyelids are too heavy I hope you don’t think I’m dead and bury me I knew a white woman who was freaked out about being buried alive because of some story of a man who tried to scratch his way out of a coffin with his nails horrible imagining what happened to his nails fingers everything and then he died suffocated horrible too that movie I saw when I was twelve or something about a long time ago those men strung to the trees crucified and blood everywhere and others with torches and when I saw it and what it was all about I was sick for weeks. Before I stopped looking I could see one of the men looked like my uncle Bert but it wasn’t him he’s still living and my grandma wanted to tell me about it but my parents didn’t let her. After a while I learned not to see it even with my eyes closed. The nurse a minute ago was it you I don’t know told me to offer the pain I didn’t even know I was moaning and offer it to who to God I guess. I’m starting to remember now at first it was just the hearing things and feeling cold but now I sort of remember the accident up to when I knew the car was going to hit and I couldn’t do anything but just wait for it and I didn’t hold on properly they’ll say I wanted it to happen and die maybe I did how can I tell it sure wasn’t on purpose but then how much of your living and doing’s on purpose. I believe I’m gonna live though ‘cause I feel alive this eyelid problem and the cold and all but I can tell and they’re stitching my left eyebrow and it’s neat how it doesn’t hurt at all it’s my nose I guess that’s beginning to ache a little. It feels big and heavy but I feel alive I mean I feel life stirring in me and breathing and not going anywhere it’s staying here inside me so even if I did want to die it didn’t happen this time either which is all right ‘cause I’m not sure I wanted it. You can’t hear me but then I can’t hear myself my voice doesn’t seem to work anymore at least for now and it’s like a dream a bad dream like the one I had when I took off my skin the way you take off a dress and tried to flush it down the toilet but it didn’t go down no matter how many times I flushed and now the stuff in my head behind my eyes is coming outside me and looking at my body with skin and all. I bet they gave me morphine or something. I’m so cool even when I look out of my head at myself lying there here and I don’t get excited when I see my skin so pretty glowing strong. I’m beginning to think of things like where I was going before the crash and that it didn’t matter nothing seemed to matter that’s why maybe I did want to die. After all. But still the relaxation doesn’t let me worry about my face even if I know it may be disfigured at least some and it’s a terrifying thought but it doesn’t worry me not really and the thought that I’ll be having a harder time at work with the new blond with that kind of figure you know and that bogus smile they’re gonna give her all the orders and how do I survive then but I’m cool as can be. I suppose if everything goes wrong I can always go back home to my folks it’ll be sort of humiliating turning up a loser but I could say it was just a vacation a little rest you know and I could visit some and sing some and feel kind of proud again only I don’t know how long I could stand the boring place anymore. It was ok when I was a kid I can see myself learning to ride the pink bike I got for Christmas once with my dad pushing his big hands still greasy even after he wiped them rough and the neighbors’ horses so great the awesome Appaloosa rubbing his nose on my hand every time I gave him a carrot and the little retarded boy I kept the bullies away from with kicks and stones sometimes. My first steady boyfriend he was cute he was in college already and he was a reader and we read to each other and I liked to touch his shaven naked head but I had this idea that I had to come to the city be independent in the middle of things which I’m glad I did no matter what also if he loved me for real he’d come to see me wouldn’t he. Last night with the guitar guy we’d been flirting for weeks and then in bed it was too weird he got off and started doing push ups on the floor he said Wait I wanted to say Don’t but he looked funny his face redder and redder and I said Sure where did he think I’d be going that’s what I’d like to know at 2 o’ clock in the morning and raining too and I didn’t have the car keys and I wanting to laugh one of those bitter bitchy witchy laughs at myself how pathetic was I with this pathetic man and my ears full of the words I didn’t say I want to kill you. Doesn’t matter though I mean to say it’s not all ended or anything it’s not the end of the world not even of civilization as we know it when I hear this I always want to laugh my bitter bitchy witchy laugh and I’m seeing inside my eyes this tunnel they keep talking about with a light shining very far off at the end so maybe I’m dying after all but not necessarily ‘cause there are people who see this same light and come back to tell or else how could we know about it. And the light is coming closer or I’m getting closer to it anyway it’s soft feels soft like the soft warm sea of the Bahamas and it’s bright but a soft bright too kind of bluish it makes me want to shut up inside because it’s very quiet. It’s real silence and the silence is soft and comfortable like a nest. Yes. I’m so glad for the silence…. And for the light and the tunnel ...