You wake up in the middle of the night twenty-four hours after prom and you are vomiting a pool of crimson. Your side feels like something is jutting and kicking and trying to give birth through your abdomen in succinct little gnaws. You can’t stand up straight. You can’t move. Your hand is pressed into your side as if you are pantomiming a little tea cup and spout.
The moment you stand your legs give out. You tell your mom
you don’t know what’s wrong. Your mothers suggest appendicitis. Your father
suggests indigestion. Today is the senior class picnic at Bradley park and you
really didn’t want to go in the first place. You can’t stand up. You fall back
to sleep. It is spring but the atmosphere outside is the color of hand-me down
argyle socks. Mother keeps padding a rag
on the top of your forehead. She inquires if you are having trouble urinating
thinking that perhaps maybe you have gall stones. You think about Doc
Horndasch, your personal OSF shrink who has pretty much glided you though the
finish line of senior year. You think about Mr. Washer the school social worker
who has become your best friends. You think about how everyday in senior high
school you wore black turtle necks to manual and felt like you were treading
underwater, ferrying a copy of Walt Whitman and Anne Sexton, hunched over like
a prehistoric cocoon, sipping from my Mister Donuts coffee mug. You think about how every morning you
couldn’t get out of your room without listening to Morrissey’s WHY DON’T YOU
FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF from Vauxhall and I. You think about how Boys for Pele
was supposed to be your savior and how (after being pushed back for six months)
when you purchased a copy of it from Co-op in Campus town you were seminally
disappointed.
The day continues to bleed ribbon s of gray. You think about
Hale’s grandfather who died six weeks ago and how you jipped school to be with
him and m he asked you if you thought he was going to heaven because he didn’t
go to church before saying FUCK IT, handing you a Dutch Master, informing you
that he is smoking in the house. It feels like various rodents and hepatitis-ridden
marsupials are endeavoring to hatch from
the side of your body as you are wheeled into the shushing doors of Methodist
emergency care. Your mom is scribbling out a slate as if she is being
petitioned for an autograph by roadies. You are lysing supine in a gurney that
is skeletal cold and wobbly. A nurse whose mouth is so white it looks like she
just gargled with a vat of bleach prodding various serpentine tubes into the
side of your right arm informing you that it was do nothing short of assuage
the seething pierce echoing half past your naval. The doctor is wheeling you into a room that
is extra-large, telling you that you will have the commodious room all to
yourself. You blink several times. You think about two days ago how you didn’t
just dance with Kitty Pekowski you more or less waded across the wooden glint
of the ersatz dancefloor. You think
about how much you like kissing her even though she is introverted and coy yet
Valedictorian of her class. You think about Germany and Neuschwanstein and smoking
black Russian at Lums.
Briefly you think about making out with Megan Snow at the
youth gathering in Chicago on St. Patrick’s day.
You wonder what Appleton Wisconsin looks like.
No comments:
Post a Comment