Tufts.

I once was innocent.

I once had unblemished skin and a naked heart.

A baby. Both soft and sweet. Gerbering. Giggling. Slobbering. Slippering.

That was before I ran away to be a sword eating, flame-throwing hermaphroditic mime in the circus of denial.

People always say that money can’t make you happy. Can’t solve your problems.

I lie in tufts of it. Letting the sweet kisses of dead presidents caress my cracking skin.

I used to wear polos. I still wear polos. Reminiscent of composure.

Shit figured out. Collar popped. A starchy statement. I am who I say I am. Nothing more. 

Somewhere along this cracked up sidewalk, I learned that today is all I have. Today is a freshly sharpened sword awaiting battle. I eat these swords like Pop Rocks. Prickling on my tongue. Belly full of weapons. Days gone by. Each dagger, a lesson awaiting regurgitation, onto some unsuspecting ninny. Someone who’s forgotten. Today.

Yesterday is a defeated Goliath. Headless. Gutted. No more. Can’t go back now. Ghosts of yourn dissipate in today’s resilience. Forget yesterday. It’s back is broken. Crumpled.

Tomorrow is nothing but a fragment. Twisted imagination. Void of promise. Plans for nicompoops. Indubitably, the Master will wave his ribbon-dancing wand, and your plans will slither away, to tremble under the bathmat. Soggy and worthless.

I once was innocent. That was before I became a subversive little prick, acquiring a PhD in bullshit, scraping artery walls, choking off life.

Let me tell you the story.

This is a picture of me at fifteen months. Pacifiers. We’ve all got them. Mine used to be literal. Now the myriad are figurative. They pay a storage fee to sit inside my mouth. Let me tell you about them.

I dreamt inside bubbles of tomorrows. I would grow up to be a firefighter. Rescuing the lives of others. Endangering my own to preserve another. Selfless. Self. Less. Every morning I would pry myself out of the brittle cage that was my body. Self outside of self. So that I might pitch this cage into burning buildings. Without thinking twice. And then one day a beam fell.

Crushed.

I would never walk again.

A crimson curtain enveloped me. The fire I once lived to fight, lapped at my ankles, snaking up my whole lower half. Gnawing away at my composure.

The issue was not the cold hard steel of the wheelchair.

The issue was the bleakness of the future.

Life without legs.

I acquired a daily routine. Mundane. No job. No hobbies. No friends. Just one-sided conversations with the television.

I’d awaken every morning at 7am. Shocked out of the darkness of deep rest. Body seized up. Contorted. Ravaged by the ghosts of tomorrow. Misery seeks company. Here I am beckoning. As the sun rises on the world, it neglects my papery skin. It neglects. No, I neglect. Myself.

I wake up every morning and I lie there. Rotting in my own cloudy visions of what this day will bring. A glimmer of hope flickers on the ceiling each new day. The glimmer that gets me out of bed. I chuck my dead legs over the edge. Hoist myself into the chair. And roll myself out to the television.

And there I live. Die. Dwell. In chasms of wretched depression.

I rarely eat.

I feel the gift of speech slowly being leeched from this swollen tongue of mine. Tongue swollen with words. Words that can’t get out. Won’t get out. Puncture with a needle and let the words ooze out. But no.

I am a pussy. A pussy with a penis. The fear ropes me into a cubicle. Boxed up. The fear chokes all remnants of life out of my feeble body.

Like a hot air balloon growing plump with the gas, so my body gets fat with aloofness.

I don’t give a fuck about this dastardly life of mine. All I think about is the compost heap of yesterdays that never got mulched into my dead garden of todays.

And then it hit me.

Then something happened one day while I was wasting in front of the television, literally. Warm piss dribbling down my dead chicken leg. Watching the Game Show Network. Siphoning off some demented form of hope from the right answers I shout at the cold glass. The pacifier of morbid self-pity just plopped out of my mouth.

Some eerie voice in the dark hallway shouting at me.

“You only have today little fucker.”

God wouldn’t call me a fucker. Would He? I guess I deserve it though.

No. Banish self-pity. Cast it off like dead skin. Sloughed. All for naught. Yards of twine heaped on the carpet. Days of a life forgotten.

No day but today.

This moment. In this moment. Call it an epiphany. Call it the transcendent light of Christ glowing upon my skin, thought bubbling my brain into pure and utter ecstasy. This day is all I have.

Fuck it, I’m goin’ for a ride.

And so I roll to the closet. Don a stale yellow sweater, with a polo underneath. Collar un-popped. Composure. With no arrogant undertones. I am who I say I am. Nothing less.

I am an invalid. With hope bright shining as the sun. For I know not what I’ve done, nor what I am about to do. I know this moment. This day. And that is all.

And here I am at the threshold. The dark hovel of a home lies behind, with nothing but the light of the world in front.

I once was innocent.

And I am innocent once more. The crimson curtain of despair has been torn. The crimson blood of Christ cleanses my sooty soul.

For grace abounding rains upon me. Reigns upon me.

I am undeserving. And yet He calls me by name.

Beckoning me out into cement meadows, where butterflies of urban sounds alight on the cusps of my ears. Colors. Magical colors pierce my retinas.

For today is a gift to me.