Blame It On Paperbacks

Part 4

No, she's not just another pretty face

She's all scattered and separated from herself

She's broad and deep and smooth and steep

She's tranquility, but she can ignite a war

She's everything she needed to become

Tearing the nth page of this notebook and filling the trash bin with the substances excreted by my brain, I prolonged a heavy sigh along with a complain about this English project we are required to submit next week. We're asked to write a lyric poem about anything we find interest in and we're going to perform it in the front of the class together with an accompaniment of any musical instrument we choose. This sounds like a plotted advantage to me since I can play guitar (but not really good), and I pictured myself halting Mrs. Sanchez from announcing this afternoon by the following phrases: "I have a mother who's currently struggling from stage 3 Leukemia. I hope that'd stop you from launching assignments and projects to me. I hope that'd trespass your midnight thoughts for a little while and knock your conscience. I hope that that'd be a rational excuse for you people to sympathize with me while my world is in a freezing tragedy. No poetic fantasies allowed, please. Thank you."

Yet that sounds selfish and immature. So I popped the bubble of my thought circling around my head like a halo. I'm pretty bored but not in an idle way. I'm bored as if I'm waiting for something while I'm pedaling myself to ultimate exhaustion. I guess getting myself preoccupied is my way of coping and avoiding the slap of truth that somebody I love is on her way to the sickbed.

The thing is I dislike this project a lot. Primarily because I'd be writing about no one and nothing but her. I'm reduced to the thought of my mother. From my smoky bath in the tub, wobbly train ride, different sorts of conversation from different people, down to every syllable of every line of my favorite song. I think, perhaps, that for the first time, my Mom conquered my mind.

I heard the door snapped. It was Mom who barged in. She looks just fine but tired. It's past 10PM and she's still up for something. I wonder what the matter could be.

"Hey, genius. Never dreamed to sleep early?" I love it when she doesn't call me by name. Or else I'd be dead every time she does.

"Maybe I did back when I was a toddler," I replied with a slight smile and not looking straight to her eyes.

I heard a soft creaking as I felt her sitting on the edge of my bed. I can't look at my mother and I don't know why. She's sick but I never volunteered to peek at her room and assure that she's fine. I never ran any of her curing errands. I never helped but I'm worried and I don't understand myself.

"Promise me you'll get to keep going," she muttered in a very low voice that I could hardly hear her. She snapped a string in me that made me detach from my pen. I was completely distracted by her presence in the first place.

"I hate to ask, but what do you mean?" Even if I know what she meant, I'm starting to get shaky.

"Even if I'm away for the meantime, you must not retract," she uttered in a strict manner like a college professor does.

"Don't you want to fight even a little?" I finally found a gut to twist my chair and now looking completely to her.

"I'm fighting, dear. I will. But life isn't ours. We cannot choose the battles to win over. The battles choose us and for us," she lectured out and I hope she just stops talking figuratively so I wouldn't have to be puzzled.