Live Through This

Aesop -- Rock, not he of the Fables -- once said, "All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day, put the pieces back together my way." I can't think of a better way to put it. Days, you mind; and some of them better than others. Years, decades, those're beyond my ken. But I knew how to handle a day. Handled them better than most, worse than few.

When I was five years old I knocked out my four front teeth trying to pop a wheelie on my bike. I'd like to think bicycle manufacturers have made kid's bikes safer since then, stopped making peddle brakes, but I don't know. Maybe if they did some teeth -- maybe some lives -- were saved, but if it isn't one thing it damn sure's going to be another. Set your watch and warrant on it.

I cried, screamed, then. Years later I would get used to and acquire an appreciation for the taste of blood in my mouth, the same way a child might grimace at the smell of scotch and then covet its aroma, long for its everlasting taste, after he's entered adolescence. You get used to things. You do.

I thought a cigarette ash had blown into my eye. As much as I blinked, it wouldn't disappear. My right eye. It's easy to ignore, I told myself. All I have to do is close it. It'll be gone . I closed it. It wasn't gone. I called a nurse in. She smelled like cigarettes and scotch, like I sometimes used to. She said I was going to be fine. I'm not.

I didn't cry or scream when they took my cancer. I smiled way back when I knew my teeth would grow back. Right here and now, I didn't cry. They took a part of me. Maybe it'll make me better, but it won't make me whole.

My word, that's a long way down. I've heard falling three storeys can kill a man. Will thirty kill me more?

That's that, as they say.