would I exist if it weren't for you?
13 October 2004
10:59 a.m.
The band around my wrist smells like a hospital bracelet--faintly of baby powder, talc.
But it is only a LiveStrong bracelet, yellow for the jersey of Lance Armstrong. Hope for thousands living with cancer. It was a gift, sent to me through the post from Ohio, sent to me as hope for living.
But it smells like a hospital bracelet, and I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it on my left wrist if the scent doesn't become fainter and disappear.
It reminds me of pain.
And so I'm back here again, because it isn't the geography of a place that keeps me from feeling--or writing my own life out like the tick-tock of some great scheme, some great clock.
It is only fear.
And weight.
And waiting for the end to come.
Or the beginning to rise out of the dirt at my feet, like perse geraniums in spring.