🍷devotional reboot🏺

when i am struggling or suffering and my affect goes dead, and the person interacting with me responds by choosing to communicate more coldly and less frequently, as though my tone is a choice i am making to withdraw from them deliberately

the clear sweep of the river will wash the jeweled pebbles under my feet for a last time, not that the pebbles are going anywhere, though eventually they'll be moved too

a part of me holds certainty that my sentimentality is worse than useless but holding and losing are states that feel so out of my control it's hard not to crush what's left

there was a last time, eurobeat blasting, swinging across dirt and paved midways like monkey bars, that i shrieked glee in a bucket seat, gripping the Jesus bar, and he popped the clutch yanked the e-brake slammed the Talon sideways but in my endorphins and giddy elation i couldn't have told you that it was the end

or the last time, curious, with the crush who destroyed me for YEARS before also destroying the gym (drugs, arson, prison, you know how it goes) climbing into an observation tower for some semblance of privacy overlooking the deserted RV lot my sweaty smooth hand finding his

that happened, didn't it? i think i remember

there was a last time on rollerblades (I called it cross-training) focused and determined and blistered as hell the expensive schools had trainers, roller-ski summers I had blades from the sports outlet and I wanted to win routine laps, tight corners, tucked downhills, accelerating swing arms, pull out side stitch but keep going - don't stop i don't know when the last time was but the extreme routine ended and I've never put them back on my feet

i just feel like i would have appreciated knowing the last time i saw my grandmother was indeed the last her nastiness and vicious criticism mellowed abruptly (which told us all that her mind had changed) but the last time, her looping astonishment at our kinship grandchildren? mine? why didn't i know that? led to tears and to breakdowns - she could not contain her subsuming relief at having a family at not being alone in the world and the joy spilled out of her, and all over her caretaker, my father, responsible for cleaning her mess so when i came back, months later, prepared to play music, talk about her childhood, not explain who I was, there was no conversation. i was not to visit. and then, on my birthday, she died

and it feels somehow cruel that my father decided that his mother was dead to me before she was gone and it feels somehow righteous that i should have had the knowledge that we would not meet again, and I should make my peace

but why should this ending be different from others? who gets the courtesy of a notice of finality? I didn't know it was the last time I would see Cecilia, or John, or my snake pendant, or my favorite aunt

and there is no fitting memorial for a dead woman whose most ardent desire for decade on decade was to die and be forgotten, transcend incarnation, to sever the lineage of memory and rebuke her seat at the ancestral table