I hate the way they changed you. Skin sloughing off broken boundaries. Influx of charred carbon scattered along your thighs. The tubes. The mechanical wheezing of compression and release, lungs collapsed drowning in sewage.
I hate the way they look at you. The fact they gave you a name. All eyes on Parkinson’s needle scratching away what everyone already knew.
Vitals aren’t looking good. Everything that isn’t vital is doing an excellent job. Your face glazed by the humidity of bad breath. Your silence finally an act of defiance. Contortions a happy memory of panic, before the onset of dread and impatience.
I don’t know if I still love you. The mess of flesh and plastic does not resemble who you are. All blood siphoned off and put back in. I used to love the way you bleed; now this is nauseating.
We always wanted to be holding each other across the distance. That deep hole keeping us together. A final kiss on sweaty forehead before the water breaks down the door. That was every day, and every morning we woke up punching pillows cursing our dealer for respecting our pallets. We were always alone. But now I’m jealous.
I don’t want to join you there. I don’t want to lick our wounds in the flames of eternity. I don’t see you anymore. You are gone.
I don’t pray for resurrection, I don’t beg for punishment, I don’t long for a time machine. Those memories a white-hot needle coursing neurotoxins through my veins. I didn’t need an accomplice, you wanted to tag along, we went our separate ways. You into this ecstasy of non-existence, and me standing over your body biting my tongue with teary rage-filled eyes. I’m not sad you’re gone, I’m not mad you went before me, I don’t want to join you.
How a split second blur and a week in the ICU can create a second identity has always humiliated me. I could never make anyone change for me, even after three years together. And now I have to be here. And lord over this corpse like a moldy stuffed animal stuffed into a gutter off the freeway.
If given the chance, those kids would never pick their stuffy back up from that. They fantasize about the loss. How they felt bigger after their dad shut them up after crying for two full miles. And if they’re smart, they’ll recognize the urge to throw themselves out the window as shared among the rest of the passengers.
I’m not sticking around to see your mother and father when they get in from Philly.
You were never special. You were never unique to want to careen into that medium of bliss. And you’re not brave for doing it either. Fantasy and action separated by who will actually care.
I just wish I had something to do with it.
ZCUMCORE 
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