"No one asks to die" she tells me.
I listen, eyes glistening as she pains
even just to feign an ounce of joy.
"And no one asks to be born,"
I answered curtly.
She laughed.
I thought it was odd, but decided
to continue on
"And no one asks for a peanut allergy.
No
one asks for a midnight shiver or
a hungry night or
a lifetime of accidents
or cancer."
And she stopped laughing. And she
looked at me, all serious, eyes shining,
and she sneezed.
Debris flew all through the room,
and a little got in my eye.
We laughed, and the hospital bed that held us up finally gave way to something
important. We stopped looking
towards my bitter closing end, towards
the tunnel and the light, and we
spent thirty seconds giggling about a poorly timed explosion of nasal debris.
Thank you, dust particle,
for a second of anything
but silence.

“I have something for you to remember me by,” said Tim.

    He held a little foam Hippo – the lone play animal supplied by the loonybin to patients in need.

     It was brand new – just as every Hippo looked – and I wondered why he’d chosen something seemingly impersonal in comparison to his other, odd gifts.

     However, what he did next made his hippo – my hippo – absolutely ideal. To people like Tim and I, that is.

     For, to my astonishment, he casually took the toy in his hands, twisted, and ripped it cleanly  in two.

     He ripped off its head, which he gave to me, whilst he kept the body.

    I will never get rid of that mutilated, foam hippo head. For he understood what no one else had ever come near.

     In this way – perhaps – Tim and I became synonyms. Synonyms for what ignorant perceptions would later christen ******, or merely, crazy (the latter - coined by those who remain too depressingly colloquial to invent unfounded diagnoses).

     These epithets, catalyzed post personifying such societal taboos as Tim or I committed, follow me still, and have yet to disperse.
  
     A criticaster disaster, personified.

     Yes; in this way – Tim and I became synonymously insane.


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