Wonder, when your mom first texts, if it really is time. Your mom can be Alice's white rabbit, disappearing anxiously down black holes, muttering. There's been a lot of paw-wringing lately. But there's also been an uncomfortable lull in family conversations where the words It's only a matter of time have come to mean It would be a goddamn gift. This Irish nihilism pricks at your childish self, hunkered behind your diaphragm, howling about fairness.
Take a shower, as though someone might be able to smell you over the “long-term living” environment, a fug of bleach masking the perfume of entropy (rot, damp, urine, boiled vegetables, unmentionable smells you know viscerally and try hard not to name). Slap on tinted moisturizer to cover the startling bags under your eyes, but don't blow-dry your hair. That takes deathbed vanity one step too far.
Drive like an asshole. You took time...
