anesthesia

pumpkin a/k/a the troll man, under anesthesia.

you breathe it and the tide goes out, but consciousness can't disappear, it reunites with the whole. so under the knife you're nowhere near the scene.out the window, your breeze curls a tired american flag into something pretty to behold. you're sunshine, trees, the fading fall air, you're each schlep stumbling into the hospital's front entrance to stay alive for their loved ones or help their loved ones stay alive.

you're there but also further out, you're the rings around saturn, the kid orion threw in the air a light year from throw to catch, you're both dippers and a blinking satellite making its rounds, spewing good news back to earth in rapid data packets.

back here on earth they're remaking part of you. but they can't touch you, you're the totality now, all the good in the world. you are baseball momentum, secret handshakes, 12 tone rows, chutes and ladders, frisbee catches. you are cherry coke and strict california grass, you are guitar through two fender super reverbs one clean and one with long delay, and the clean one is snaking a melody through the hedgerows of delay.

you are every love that ever was and ever will, you are the discovery and documentation of heaven, perpetual motion patented and pushed on late night TV for just infinite easy installments. you are every historic first that ever was, first love, first man in space, first saturday morning cartoon. you are the first child, king troll the 1st, progenitor of a long trollish line.

we've been beating ourselves up all week about this and now it's finally coming to pass. every time a door opens i picture some asshole with a bereavement counselor name tag. 'Mr. and Mrs Trollman? I'm sorry..." and what I would punch in a violent helpless expression.

trollman, if you just make it through this, we promise, we'll never take anything for granted ever. we'll learn spanish and chinese and esperanto. we'll dot every i, cross every t, give every homeless person ten dollars and never say a mean or snarky thing to no one. we'll honor every tenet of every religion, we'll root for every team, we'll unbreak everything we've wrecked and apologize to everyone we've ever hurt. we'll take full responsibility for u.s. foreign policy and do our best to reverse it, we'll never ignore each other another second, all will be sainted perfect love ever and ever amen.

but all of this, we bring upon ourselves. in the end it was a minor procedure as those things go and now they're leading us it's fine he's fine are you sure he's fine to where you sleep in the nurse's arms.

and everything that could have receded from the world never to return is back again, and i'm kind of starved for one of those not-bad hospital burgers.