There's a smell to sickness, and it has settled into my house, again
There's a smell to sickness. A slow kind of rot. It is soft and written between the lines, cushioned by cotton and something worse than antiseptic. It's in the bodily fluids and the inhaled dust of crushed pills that are to be diluted in water and pushed through a feeding tube, which will be black by the time someone finally takes it out. It has settled into my house again, occupies a water bed and is being fed, kept alive, nurtured.
I wonder when and how it is decided if one will suffer unimaginably during their time on earth. If you will die like a birth. Conception, development, and never-ending labor. A drawn-out thing.
I don't want to die like animals go extinct. Decades (for we don't have centuries for ourselves. Small mercies) of a pitiful and painful display. "Let's sign this petition," "Let's spread awareness," "Let's do something to stop it." Breed it, care for it. Like we are doing now.
It is duty. Unscapable now that it's here, but why is it here in the first place? Let me die like a flame going out with an unexpected gush of wind, like glass being tipped over in a mindless move. No, too sudden, maybe. Let me die like a Mexican Petunia, a withering of no longer than a few hours, a day tops. Let me die like my Grandpa did. Quick, definitive. Take me with the last ray of sunshine, and into the night Lady Artemis lights up. Phosphorus twins.
We seldom talk about the toll sickness takes on the caretakers.
You have so many questions and no one has the answers, not even one. And it is taboo to express them out loud. Feelings like these are received with shocked looks and the twitch of hands eager to cross themselves as if you've just asked them to entertain something irreversibly unholy. The Catholic inquisition killed and rammed their God so far down our throats so we would accept suffering with closed eyes and willing arms. We don't have to; it won't be rewarded. That was just to scare us into submission.
So, this is for every single one.