(mortality play)

My brain is a dance floor in saturday night fever, without the glory of john travolta's once humanistic frame peddling slick shit brooklyn postures for the drunk battered fathers and some fran drescher types.

Not that i've ever endured the whole film. in fact, i think i took in the most of that disco dancing sans broken bones (goddamnit) flick this evening in the emergency room at lenox hill while my mother paced in front of me, clutching a copy of the da vinci code. belching and sighing. belching and sighing.

See the woman's got this thing about her, this magnetism for plagues that confound physicians at 1am and has left me drained since i was just a little scrap of a thing sitting on her lap listening to her talk about angels and how she was destined for a place in heaven.

Those were the cancer days. a time for chemotherapy and augmentation. masectomies. vomit. crying and baldness. fear the likes of which i've never quite learned how to convey (thankfully, i was young enough to be nothing but ingrained with a perpetual sense of loss and a distinctive notion of mortality that strikes mute horror in my heart time and time again) but i still know all too well.

It begs a question, really.

Have things grown better or worse?

Back then the notion of death was clear. my mother had cancer. my mother was going to die. only she didn't. she's survived many years, countless operations and a seemingly limitless amount of illnesses and hospital visits. always coughing. always ailing. getting better for a day, maybe two before she goes off in another turn and i don't recognize a choice but to turn away and wait.

So i wait.

But what the fuck am i waiting for? am i waiting for her to get better? am i readying myself for the day she finally does up and fucking die?

I don't really know.

Is it too late to even wonder?