The Future Plan

You ask who I am?
I do not have words to say.
I am only me.

Do you know who I am?

Do you make an assumption about me when you lay my 17 dollars and 54 cents on the counter after you’ve slid the coffee my way?

Could you assume from how I stared at your hands counting change (which I’m sure you thought my gaze for your breasts, red hair draped on them) that I know at 3 people who have died from cancer? 2 from breast, 1 from brain.

Could you assume that one of those was my nephew’s 12 hour wife, married so he could take care of her fatherless and now motherless son?

Could you assume I didn’t know I had a grandfather until I was 21?

Could you know that my grandmother died from Alzheimer’s and that for 5 years, she did nothing but babble and goddammit, I feel like I’m next?

Could you know that all of these memories are so beautiful to me that I don’t understand how I can function when I remember them?
Can you know that generally, on a day to day basis, an emotional amnesia allows me to order this coffee without bursting to tears over every single possible path your life could take and every beautiful and painful moment that passes its’ neutrinos through my mind at once.

Could you assume that I have gods for friends, gods that have seen everything? Angry gods, mad at themselves and the worlds they’ve created. Forgetful gods that cared so much for the world, they had to split their minds into other bodies so they could deal with the exhaustion of existence.

But you didn’t assume this.
You assumed me a horny callous pig.

Now give me my coffee.
I love you anyway.