Six years, four days from now

Losing Self


She was supposed to look after me.

Do I sound spoiled? Entitled? Angry, hurt, empty?
I won't deny any of that.

She was supposed to look after me.
That was our arrangement: I would go out into the world and bring home money, and she would look after me, do the things my hereditary neurosis made hard.

She would love me. I was such a mess, I needed loving so bad--an arid land that needed water, and more water.

She never stopped loving me.
She never stopped looking after me,
with looking after me meaning holding me and letting me cry on her.
She only stopped doing the things she could no longer do,
and am I angry?

I am so angry.

Not that she couldn't do the impossible,
but how much of herself she lost,
how she felt like nothing but a burden to me when "all" she had to offer was what I needed most: her love.
She didn't think it was enough,
not after all the years of taking care of things, driving me to work, remembering what I forgot.
She thought she was a burden
and how could I explain that just because I was tired to the point of depletion,
that didn't make her a burden.

She was what she had always been, the home I needed to come to at the end of the day.

For a long time I thought that was why she died, because she didn't think I loved her anymore
because I didn't love her enough.
It breaks my heart to think that
like it breaks my heart to think she died alone,
with me asleep right there.

She was sitting up, and I know I helped her sit up
though I never woke to do it.
Did I say anything to her in my sleep,
the things I always said? "Are you all right?" "I love you."

All I can do is hope I did,
because she knew that even in my sleep, I loved her.


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