your rebirth is a story incomplete.
why? maybe because you havent grown up yet. maybe because you grew up too long ago. maybe because you're already gone, because you're gone and this world doesnt remember you. you're gone and your father lives in a one bedroom apartment and still cries every night for a life he couldnt live to his fullest, where your mother tucks in her bed in her childhood home and tangles her fingers in the threads of the pillow like she used to as a kid.
age comes like a soft blanket wrapping over you, you dont even know when you're gone.
in his last days, your father holds your hand. he tells you of his father, and his father's father. he tells you of the summer he went picking mangos, the winters he spent cramming over his exams. he tells you the same thing you've heard a thousand times in your life, and you hold his trembling fingers to your chest and listen to him. i solved my tenth grade books at least twenty times before exams you know, he says.
then: if you'd even put half the effort you'd have been so much more than i was.
that's when you cry. he's never said that to you before.
your mother is a little difficult to remember, but what will always stay with you is her, and you, in the kitchen. pressed together after two days of not speaking. sorry sorry i wont do it again. you'll watch your mother water the plants, old age settling into her frail bones. you'll watch her water the same ones over and over again and cry because she's always loved gardening. because you remember being 4 and watching her tell you what a rose and hibiscus was, remember being 8 and planting a sampling. remember being 12 and curious, wondering how your mother stood the dirt. 13, and watching her fume over the goats that chewed off her tulsi.
15, listening to her taunt you again. remind you of how little you are invested in things.
your rebirth is a story incomplete.
you will never draw a period to these tales, you'll never pry them apart to look into what lies at the bottom. perhaps it will always be this, your father and his trembling fingers— the life he's wanted for you, the one you couldnt have. your mother and her flowers— the peace she's yearned for, her whole entire life.
you, and this hour in the night.
this hour in the night when you are born anew.
