8:12 am
I can’t sweat for speaking no speak for sweating. It was my mother I dreamed dead in her body. I thought I was sleeping but I had to be dreaming, it was bits of both and there she was bent over me. I could smell her breath wet ashes and formaldehyde. She had a tube, there in the hospital, that went down into her body and out from it came green and yellow and sometimes bloody mucus. Neverstopping. It was all I could see while pretending not to look. How are you you look good today. Other bags of waste too. Unbearable to sleep on the floor watching those bags fill and waiting. She bloated toward the end. Her skin puffed and filled with fluid until the geography of her hands stretched smooth. Maps of wrinkles none of us needed consult until they were unrecognizable. She couldn’t breathe out very well, but they were filling her with oxygen to keep her alive and poison her slowly. She was bent over me where the wall should be. There she was. Silent. Repoachful. Vomiting into her white china bowl.