My
29th Life
I am alive, already. It feels like I just blinked my eyes and 999,999,999,982 years went by .I can’t pin prick the exact moment, it’s more like a growing awareness that beats with my renewed heart and spreads like blood all through my tiny body. Beat. Beat. With every beat I become more alive, I wonder when the opposite happens and every beat starts making me a little closer to dead. When I am nine or does it not until the water starts filling my lungs?
Great, I am nine seconds old and I am already remembering. It gets earlier every time. I just want to rest, can’t I sleep in this time?
Of course how’s this for my sense of time- 999,999,999,982 years feels like an instant to me but nine months in my mother’s womb is the closest thing I know to eternity. The closest thing I know to rest.
I am not an ordinary baby. The only thing I don’t remember is when I was.
I remember when I will be born- May 15th, a Wednesday at 5:16 am. My mom will name me Sam after my grandfather who will never call me that or his grandson as many time as I live. If I am alive my father has already left my mother and me- leaving behind nothing but my brown skin, brown hair and brown eyes. I will have my mother’s last name and be Sam Fredricks and never know what my father’s is- though I guess Ramirez or Cruz or Juarez.
I remember who’s president- Bill Clinton, a man that my grandfather will throw his beer mug at on tv one summer night when I am three.
I remember who the prettiest girl in the world is- Dominique, and that she does not remember me. I don’t know what it is like to kiss a girl but I remember that they have cooties again so I don’t mind, for now.
I remember high school. How could I forget? I remember the beginning but not the end- I will never make it out. On the first day one of the bigger boys will give me bruises that my step father will try to match. I remember my mom pretending not to notice. I know exactly how many times this will happen- eighty seven. Eighty seven times every time.
I remember when I die. I will hurt, I will be scared. I will see it coming because every time it is exactly the same yet I won’t do anything about it. The world will turn black and then I will end up back here.
I remember because it just happened to me, what felt like moments, but was billions of years before I had a heart beat again and woke up inside my mother. For the twenty ninth time.
