To The Winds Pity, Who Sigh Back Again

Part of the bed again. It didn't matter. The bed was beginning to feel like a part of me. I wasn't sure what month or day it was. Or what year really, but that didn't matter either. I awoke confused, thinking of how this bed and its sweaty pillow knew me better than I knew myself these days. And I vaguely wondered how I had returned home, to a place in the past long gone and dead, with people who I didn't know anymore, and who were miles and miles away. But time is funny like that, I am certain that it is not a straight one way road. But more of an intersecting rotary, where you can get on and off in different areas any time you choose.

Because I was certain that I was home again. I could feel the cold air of New England winter snuffing my nose, the great exhale of winter. Despite twenty or thirty passing since I had last returned, I didn't particularly care how I was back. Or how I was a young man again. And I didn't want to open my eyes for a while, even after waking.

Because with them closed, I could feel the old room of my childhood, tucked away in the far corner of the big, cold house, safe and secure. In my mind, it was winter, and snow was silently falling onto the frozen hill of our court yard, and I could see the passing plows pushing snow in the street, blocking the driveway which would no doubt upset my dad when he got home from work at 5:30 as my brother and I played video games. Probably a football game, as it was the season.

We'd be there, Polar bear.

Then I could feel my cellphone in my pocket, even though I hadn't had a phone until I was twenty, and suddenly I was older, and it was vacation time at the university. I was walking under burned and ambered leaves which feel the air to their deaths on the ground every septemeber. It had been years since I was even in a climate which had an autumn. But there I was, within the laughter of the living youth, crossing the streets with books tucked under my arms and my black winter cap pulled tightly down over my long hair. I rubbed my chin, and felt a goatee which I hadn't sported since I was an optimistic, smiling student.

Chipping away, Polar bear.

Taken from my prime, I awoke with a gurgling sound. I was back in the present now, and my eye lids felt very heavy. My lips are sour sandpaper. I was in my bed, before a great window which I always insisted stay unobstructed so I could view the weather. Bedridden, and rarely speaking, I sat before this portal to the living, every day now, watching the weather change. It was the best television I could ask for. The acting was fantastic. Mailmen drive by with their holiday surprises. Couples holding each other in a lovely way that made anyone watching forget all the terrible news that wouldn't matter in another few days. Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. Polycythemia vera. Idiopathic myelofibrosis. Whats a few more weeks. Months. Such a wonderful time.

And more and more, as the bed began to mold to my skin, I felt at peace with the way things had come to be. No bitterness or spite in my thoughts, for I could always escape to the happier times of splendor in my mind, where time was just a ride that I could climb upon and go wherever I had been and where I will always be.

I'll always be there, Polar bear.

And I thought to myself sometimes, this must be what Christ had felt, on his lonesome cross, waiting for his own weight to crush his lungs and choke on himself as the weather slowly moved overhead. Probably hoping to fade and disappear into the wood. Left alone with thoughts and too much time, watching the weather move. I closed my eyes, and saw the sunlight making strange patterns through the rushing blood in my eyelids. Flowing like the blood in my veins. My white cells drifting through the rivers of platelets, dying. Drifting already dead. Millions of little white corpses in my body.

Polar bears starving on drifting islands of ice.

I was gracefully back in my younger self again. My clothes wore tight on my muscular arms, and a scarf was tied tight around my neck to protect against the wind which wept from the thick forest. I was on a back porch somewhere in autumn again, at a pub it seemed. And around me were the beautiful women I had surrounded myself with when I had the charm and wit to do so. And we laughed and drank from pitchers of beer, smoking cigarettes like chimneys and telling stories in our thick accents like we did at least once a year in the valley. The whole world lay before us a virgin, young and unfulfilled. And we were the youth, bright eyed and dangerously innocent. Only concerned with each others smiles.

Just wanted to say thank you for being here with me. As I lay on my own cross. Right now my skin feels like its on fire. Can you get a sunburn with out being in the sun? Did Christ's skin blister and whither like leather, dead armadillos on the side of the road pounded by rubber into pavement under hot skies? The birds circling looking for a meal. The birds wouldn't get me. And they didn't get the Son either, because they took him down. But they would've. The birds take the bones. Break on rocks like oysters for the soft marrow. Such a wonderful time. God, I hate birds. I always hated birds.

Do Polar bears eat birds?