as much as i'd rather be a bird or maybe, a cat
i have to remind myself that i am human
and i have a mother who is also human
and she had a mother who was also human
and sometimes, as a human, we lose our feelings
they fly away, sometimes, leaving humans not feeling.
feeling nothing but numbness, emptiness.
all i said was "i feel sad today".

she looked at the sky, gasping for her breath and praying
she prayed to her mother in the sky because she needs strength.
she says to the emptiness of the car, because i've melted into the seats into nothingness,
"god, why did you take her from me? she was all i had. now you have left me all alone with myself. and i cannot even save myself. how can i help my daughter too?"

she told the nothingness about how her grandparents came here for her, from the land of communism, sick and dying and seventy years old.
they died here and were buried in foreign soil, sad and alone. for her life to be better.
and about her mother, who left her daughter at seventeen to live alone for ten more years in the land, a victim of alcoholism and of the government.
she told me of the sacrifices they made for her own life to be better than theirs, and for the lives of her children.

the salt was drying on the face of the nothingness at this point, angrily staring out of the windows at the nothing.
she said it wasn't worth it.
the sacrifices they made for her were not worth it.

not worth the life of the nothing. that is why it is nothing. it is not something. and it is never anything.

and it will never be anything.

all because the nothing felt sad today.