NOTHING MORE

After I stopped radiating the dizziness stopped and I could see things clearly again. My parents came over to chat and we sipped various drinks and kept television at a distance. My sister had died three years earlier and my brother was missing by his own choice. I went missing at some point as well but my parents found me in the dark of a campground trying to kiss a girl I had just met hours earlier, when light existed. The years that passed bled into the now-ness I know and do not require forethought. My parents grew weary and left, leaving me to sit and sip with the televised images, who were not sipping anything.

A day or two passed but it wasn’t much. I mowed my yard and trimmed a few bushes and retrieved mail and made a sandwich and watched the television like I was watching a kid trying to piece a puzzle together, a puzzle meant for an adult. When night came, as most nights seem to come for me, I found myself without a blanket, exposed to a world of cold. I thought of my dead sister. I thought about my missing brother. Both of them were missing but my sister would never be found. If I ever located my brother on any grid he would deny everything. What’s the use of finding someone if they tell you they don’t exist.

© 2023 Jeffrey S. Callico