On the Day Shift

It sounds so far away, now, when they speak of upcoming ife in the home land. It's real close for them. They talk of contracts, of apartment views and street numbers, and as you try to conjure the images in your head, it's as though everything comes to you through a mist. It's like you know the feeling, but don't recognize it as yours. 

Plans are made for a weekend upstate, wishes for snow and recipes for winter stews squeezed on a calendar page. As dreamy recollections of another trip years ago resurface, you find the same surreal sheen on the memories, the same impenetrable heart beating dully in your chest. Perhaps you are too old to feel anymore, perhaps the regular joys and pains of life no longer reach through your thick skin the way they did. Perhaps you are safe within your fortress, at last. 

It's alright, ma 

I'm only dying.