You Shouldn't Be Alive

You shouldn’t be alive. You shouldn’t be alive, and yet here you are, cigarette dangling from your mouth as the music festival flows around you.

It isn’t that you are unaware of how close you came to death. You are. After all, you were there.

But you have become ambivalent to the way death trails you. You make sure you cannot smell her apple blossom scent for the plume of smoke forever on your tongue.

This morning your mother called. She couldn’t sleep and was going through some photo albums. She came across the photos. The ones of you, age eight, in that massive hospital bed. Your head bald from chemo. It brought her right back to the clawing, aching fear that you were going to die. And even now, forty years later, when the fear strikes, she has to call, hear your voice muffled with sleep.

“Yes, Mom, I am here. I'm okay,” you’d said. And though exasperation, crept into your tone, you were smiling. Perhaps you will visit her next weekend, let her ancient hands run over your head, feel her lips on your forehead anchor you in the fact that you are alive.

You didn’t tell her. You won’t tell her.

Tomorrow you will be in a church basement to collect a ten-year chip. You will stand up in front of the men, itching and shaking in their seats. You will tell them you were once where they are. They will look at you—with your whole body covered in tattoos, reeking of cigarette smoke—and wonder if they should trust you. Some of them will be bankers and doctors. They will want to turn away from the tattooed stitch marks on your eyes and mouth.

You will tell them about the night ten years ago when you overdosed on some combination of uppers and downers, when you realized you had to get clean. Then you will tell them about today: how it feels to be here with the summer sun on your bare skin, the music pulsing through the air, through every cell in your body.

You will tell them what it means to live. But you cast the meeting from your mind. You are busy.

Nearby, your daughter twirls—her tattooed, muscled legs moving to the EDM beats you both love.

You will inhale and try to pull yourself into this moment—the sound of your daughter’s laugh, the pulse of the beat of your heart in sync with the music.

When someone walks by with an apple fritter, you think it is Her. After all, last week you were back in that big city hospital. Last week the doctor told you to stop smoking. Told you the scans don’t look good. He wanted you to rest, take it easy, consider getting your affairs in order before exploratory surgery on Monday.

But then you see the apple fritter in someone’s hand. Death is not here. Not yet.

Your daughter laughs and takes your skull-marked hand. You spin her around and marvel at her—the tangled mess of her sweaty hair, her green eyes.

Right now, you are alive. You are living.

When your daughter steps back, needing both her arms thrown to the sky, you flick your lighter, lift your chin to the sky, and exhale another plume of smoke with closed eyes.

Maybe you are dying again, but for this moment, you are living.