black oak.
I don't even know what kind of tree grows in the backyard. I wonder how much the artificial turf that encircles it affects it. Certainly, it has survived this far and it has produced quite enough leaves this year to make the season a chore. Still, something can survive for quite a while even if everything surrounding it is slowly choking the life out of it.
Or maybe the turf is great for the tree. I'm no fucking botanist.
I've been riding out an illness this week. Started on Sunday. Feel like I finally started to turn a corner last night, and while today has definitely been better in terms of outright symptoms, my low energy level is somehow making me feel worse than yesterday. At least then I could understand not being motivated to do things, when mucus was emanating from nearly every orifice on my head and my brain throbbed from the constant violent coughing.
Sure, I shouldn't blame myself for my lack of energy. Immune systems fighting a war need energy, after all, and I know I also basically wasn't able to sleep at all on Tuesday night. Still paying off that debt. Retreating to the sofa in the middle of that night, as to not make my problem another's, I reflected on the last time we shared a night under the same roof. (Excluding those nights in the hospital, I suppose.) Was it really here? With you crashing on the same damn couch?
I couldn't help it. As I wheezed and coughed, and berated the universe with feeble “oh god”s and “fuck”s, how much it reminded me of your final nights. You with the same lamentations. We are—were—different people. Very different people. But we shared a voice, and it still trips me up from time to time.
I don't know if you'd want me to write more, honestly. But here it is. I'm not dead. Felt like it a couple times this week, though. FYI.