Antepasados

I am awake.

At least I think I am.

My eyes focus a bit and in the near darkness lit by the lone nightlight I make out the vague shapes of the old tiles above my bed.

My mother told me that they reminded her of the ceiling tiles in my grandparents’ house.

I’ll be damned if I can confirm or deny.

Like so many things in my past I have no concrete recall. I shake the thought and sit for a while.

No, I lie a while because I am in my bed.

Yes?

Yes.

I stretch my arms out and feel the horizontal surface beneath my forearms. My fingertips press down into what I know now to be the memory foam topper of my outrageously expensive bed on the retail market. I would have paid nearly four thousand dollars for this mattress had I not been employed by the manufacturer. Because their name was on my paycheck and it was an old showroom relic, I paid a mere two hundred.

Ridiculous, predatory industry.

Yes.

I am in bed.

All right, fine, I know where I am but why am I aware?

My room has no windows. It is in a small apartment. Under eight hundred square feet.

Small compared to the house I had once owned a lifetime ago.

One thousand four hundred and ninety five square feet. Three bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen comprised this aspect of success in my life.

No, it was part of a dream. A dream I believed in it's entirety and sense of purpose which was little more than the vainglorious plumage of a peacock.

The home was modest at best but to me, after years, no, decades of struggle, it was the edifice of accomplishment.

What a fucking joke.

But that is not why I am awake.

Why?

Why the fuck have I suddenly come to awareness after tucking myself in-between Wal-Mart purchased sheets?

Cheap at nineteen ninety nine for the set.

I haven’t moved since I have come to awareness.

Though I feel the elite priced mattress beneath my palms, the rayon cotton combo of sheets made in China, Mexico, India, choose your appropriate underpaid labor force country of origin, chafe boldly.

Against my sides I feel the warmth of two little bodies pressed against ribs and hip. Between my legs is a third, nestled snugly between kneecap and pelvic bone.

My subtle stirring has caught their sleepy awareness and against warm, cheap cotton and rayon covered flesh I feel the gentle vibration of triplet purrs.

For the briefest of moments I sink into the moment and simply feel.

My children.

My kittos.

My little loves.

The trio of feline indulgence lulls me, yet I do not return to sleep. I look to the right, to the dim light of the sun clock to submit to the truth of the hour.

It is 3:15 in the morning.

Why am I awake?

There is no damnable reason that makes sense.

Fine.

Fine!

I close my wakeful eyes then still my mind and body together to ignore the susurration of my feline children to connect to the physical space of my apartment.

Silence.

There is hardly a sound from the main avenue of my small town drag which my apartment fronts. The low hum of a late resident’s vehicle home or away but nothing of consequence.

My eyes cast to the right again. It is now 3:34 AM. Nearly twenty minutes and not a damn thing gained from it.

Fine.

Fine!

It isn’t my apartment. So what, what then?

I allow my thoughts to drift. I am hoping, likely foolishly, that something will congeal from all this bullshit of wakefulness.

I spent an evening indulging myself. No, not indulgence, self pity?

No.

Drowning my sorrows?

No.

Priming.

Priming that emotional core which I have artfully learned to anesthetize with logic and reason and, if truth be told, dissociation.

I know damn well how not to feel or at least to feel without feeling.

How is that for an oxymoron?

Despite my cleverness here I lie.

Predawn,

Pre-life,

Awake.

I am thinking too much. I know this.

I’m too fucking aware.

The usual bullshit so I put on the headphones, select the first EMDR track I can find and sit.

I listen to it because my therapist is right.

Because it fucking works.

What the ever loving fuck is this bullshit about?

That track is shit, too tranquil, too much like a massage background track.

Fuck.

Fine!

Time to look for what resonates.

I mean I’m awake when I should be asleep! May as well make the best of it, right?

And….there it is….the sound I needed. Tick...tock...tick...tock...tick...tock...

I hunted today.

Not for sport or gain but knowledge and knowledge I knew could hurt me.

I knew Eto and Pinpon had died but I was searching for a different reason.

I knew I needed to know...no...

Not know.

Confirm.

Confirm what I somehow knew about Welita.

I found it.

I will keep it to myself but I wasn’t surprised. I knew.

But...How?

Like it matters.

She died this year on July 2, 2022. I still don’t know how I feel about it.

Mi Tia is still alive as is Mundo.

Through her I found my younger half brother Ralf who is married and has kids and I see our sperm donor in him as I have always seen him in me.

I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t connect based on what I see he has followed on his book of faces.

There was a certain wistfulness but I know Joe.

Joe.

I know that man too damn well and any embrace of hope is always lined with a field of mines that will obliterate any warmth of thought.

Strangely, despite my discovery, I am content with limited pictures and profile images that don’t tell me shit about them. It isn’t about caring or the lack. It is recognizing that I gain nothing from the knowledge either way.

I lie quietly, remember, and sit with this for a while.

I rest.

I drift.

Perchance I dream.

I wake…again.

Virgil stirs and moves up to the crook of my right arm. His broad head rests in the nook of my shoulder. The deep purrs from his chest vibrate into my own like low, seismic waves betwixt the strata beneath our feet.

I hear a speed bike race down the Avenue at an idiotic speed.

and...

I wait.

I am present.

I am here. I still don’t know why the fuck I am awake.

It is 3:57 AM. Nearly four.

Two hours from my alarm. Most would stay up but I am stubborn. I cling to what I think I am owed. More sleep in this instance so I do not move.

Lugh stirs.

His meow squeaks into my left ear and he moves up.

I automatically raise the bed clothes with my left arm. I am grateful I trimmed his claws as the dull sharpness of his delicate pawing still scrapes along the skin of my bicep and he slides under the covers.

Per usual he pauses, his tail held high above the event horizon of the covering’s black hole.

A purling, squeaking meow.

A half moon turn later and he is broadside to me.

I feel his back feet collapse and press into my ribs, left paw bends into my shoulder, right across my chest. Whiskers tickle my nose and chin mercilessly as he tucks one vanilla, ginger cheek into the hollow of my own cheek and jaw.

My thoughts pause and disperse.

I am present again.

I feel Virgil stretch against my ribs into my right shoulder as Lugh sighs into the left. Tatiana has moved and is content against my right calf.

It is 4:08 AM.

I am awake and it doesn’t fucking matter. None of it matters except to say that it happened.

None of them matter, not my own plans, ideologies, intents, and a few were unpleasant and hurtful, yet the rest...

OH...

The rest were love, joy, pleasure, and bliss, y recuerdos que dicen

¡¡¡Volver, Volver, Volver!!!

¡Pero, estoy aquí!

I have been here, just as I was there

I will be there again, but I will not remain.