Second person
And then when she's not in the room any longer to distract you, you're confronted with your own discomfort. It's dark outside. The windows are open. Even the fan is on. But the air is sitting and warm. You've recently grown attached to sparkling water and so there's a tall, cold glass of that on the table, which offers some comfort. But then as you reach out for the glass, you realize that the skin on your back has blended somehow with the fabric on the sofa. You become fascinated by the way your back almost peels away from the dampening material when you lean forward. You listen closely for the "pop," but it doesn't happen, so maybe you mimic the sound you wanted to hear with your tongue. Maybe. The playfulness passes to be replaced by worry that the sweat will stick and sit and smell; you're having guests this week. Will they smell your smell? Will they smell?
And you wonder how hot it is in
You know its just a matter of waiting--it will get cooler and the tiredness will take over. In the meantime, distractions help. You're almost done reading Ian McEwan's Atonement. But Briony seems particularly annoying right now. You know that you're supposed to appreciate the development of her character from the precocious but bratty child she was to the world-weary and heart-heavy nursing student she is. And there are times when you slip into the story; I mean, imagine the guilt if you weren't exactly in her shoes when she's faced with caring for the soldier with the shrapnel in his leg, or the one with the missing nose and cheek, or the french one—half his skull gone, his brain exposed. But then, and maybe it's the heat, you can't help but get annoyed with Briony because you remember what she was like when she was younger and maybe she's just playing out another fantasy of what she thinks her life should look like if she wants to be our heroine. You want it to be about the soldiers, maybe returning to Robbie's perspective. But it's hot and maybe you just need something different to read. Or, for now, to realize more familiar fantasies.
And so you pick up the book you bought earlier today and you realize you should have gotten some more lighthearted reading material because what you pick up is Brian Fies' graphic novel, Mom's Cancer. And, yeah, this one you can't put down even if you wanted to because imagine the guilt now. And you think, I can't write about mom's cancer better than he does, so maybe I should just stick to my bogeys and my pirates. There are tears in your eyes because the story has a happy ending. And then there are tears in your eyes when you read the afterward and learn of another ending. And you've known so many of these endings.
A lot of it is the heat--because heat makes you feel your body just a little bit more than you normally would--but you imagine what it would be like to be like that. To see the seizures, or the fever delirium, or to have to joke about things because how else can you deal with dying. Sometimes you don't have to imagine too far. And then you know it's like you're seeing yourself on the pages in front of you, and then you're standing outside of yourself, looking back at yourself.
Your first person and your second person.
There’s a cat attacking your foot—the foot that’s still a little tender from a couple weeks ago. And you forgive her because it means that it’s cooler now and she has fur and you're her human.
