ruinous empathy
Photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash If you were a snowflake— your mother a glacier, your arms branched and reaching— the photos would melt you. The blast-orange light revealing a thrown-back head, flames marching along an IV tube, blaze branched, arm reaching. You would throw your cold body on the fire, turn to steam. You would mourn the loss, condemn the evil. But you are a fist of coal— not hard enough to become a diamond, you are disappointment in the toe of a bad child's Christmas stocking. And so you file the photos between Guilt and Luck in your dewey decimal mind. Your mother was a librarian, your father an engineer. Their shared currency was worry. So when you wonder if you are dying, if your CBC is tea leaves, if animals can smell cancer, is this self-love or -hatred? Ego is a red herring, a lavender menace. And when you thought, But they're probably not even sick, they were probably in the hospital because of the war, you crowned them innocent and worthy of
