outta my head

i knew. i knew already what my mom was going to say. i had seen the stacks of mail from the oncology clinic piling up on the counter. i had caught her wiping away silent tears in the last few weeks when she thought no one was looking. i wish i had been less observant...just so i could have had a little more time to spend wading in my ignorance. i had prepared myself for this. so when she asked me to come out to the patio to talk, i was ready.

it was around nine'o'clock at night. i had always been grateful to live on a ranch, the silence at night was something that one could not find in a city. but i would have given anything to hear the honks of angry cars or for there to be soft sounds of a television playing from a neighbor's living room on that night. i sat on the rotting picnic table, jailed by the silence of the ranch. i looked at my mom, she stood by the table. she paced back and forth, there was an anxious energy to her as she stumbled to try and find her words, and i did not bother to try and help her find them. her fingers stayed on her necklace as she zipped the charm back and forth across her neck. it made me dizzy. i looked at the sky, trying to find the big dipper. i thought of how many stars there were up there, and what would happen if one just came crashing down from wherever it was lightyears away. hoping that those hot, fiery gassed flames could somehow find me within the next thirty seconds, so that way i would never have to hear whatever words were about to come out of mom's mouth. but sadly, that just isn't reasonable. but with news as what i believed she was going to tell me, would anything ever be reasonable again after this?

she opened her mouth, and began to speak.