Text Messages by Christian Cruz

“Have you seen today’s headlines,” asked my friend's text.

I didn’t know
what he was talking about.
Always thinking of the worst,
I imagined the message
was about a friend of ours dying.
I saw a newspaper
unfold in my mind.
A picture of a dead body.
His three hundred pound,
five foot, eight inch frame,
sprawled out in print.
My thoughts of death
had taken over again.
An old replay of my seizure attack
was then added to the playlist.
The lapping waters of a shallow pool,
an overbearing summer sun,
my vision melting
into a pair of collapsing legs,
and the need to grab hold of something.
Anything.
As if my hands would anchor me
in this world forever.

“About that girl we were classmates with,” came the second text,

My eyes lost their way
between the lines,
I found myself
in the early winter mornings,
traveling to my old,
Catholic high school.
The upper platform of
Queensboro Plaza.
Winds that howled
as they touched the rusted beams of the el.
The building shadows suffocating
the morning light into a sick blue.

“She won the competition,” started the third.

I knew why my friend brought up the past.
He was happy to have known a “somebody.”
I wondered if he knew all of us
would end up as nobodies.
If we were lucky,
we would live an extra fifty years after our deaths
through some memory of a sibling, spouse, or child.
A few hundred years on a death certificate,
and if there was money, a headstone.
My mother always told me,
“You can only depend on yourself,”
but even this seemed false.
The flesh would give way to time and decay.
“From dust you came, to dust you shall return,”
my old parish priest would murmur,
his thumb scraping the ash of burnt palm leaves
across my forehead into the sign of the cross.

“Were classmates in Physics,” finished the last.

What was I at the time?
A senior with baggy eyes,
stealing naps during class.
I slept through them because
I didn’t need anymore science.
No more reminders
that life is just some movie.
Where "The End" will be met
by an obituary of rolling credits and
whispers of shuffling feet.
Followed by the full stop conclusion
of an empty room.

© 2017 Christian Cruz