Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

I’ve got it all figured out. We’re a parasite. Other animals on this planet coexist with nature. We don’t; we’re like scabies. Tiny mites covering the outer layer of earth, burrowing into it, infecting it. We are like tapeworm

I felt like I was never in the moment I was in. I was always looking back, or
worried about the future

“What about you? What happened to you?”
I pause.
“I’m dying.”
He makes a face. “You’re dying?”
I nod.
He exhales. “Yikes. How long do you have?”
I answer gravely. “I have no idea.”

“One day I am going to die,” my internal dialogue asserts. That reality reverberates in my skull like a shriek in a cave. I am going to experience whatever it feels like for my life force to finish. Face it. Whatever animates my body will stop. Black. Nothing. That isn’t just some alarming scary-movie fear; it’s true. People will have to deal with my corpse.

I can’t get a pet because one day it would die, and I doubt I’d recover.

“Garbage is more lasting than people.”

There is a palpable silence.

I reach toward the coffee on the table. I pick up one of the white Styrofoam cups.

“I wonder if this cup will be on the earth longer than I will,” I consider out loud, while I struggle to pour myself some burnt-smelling coffee.

I’m pretty sure I captioned that photo “Me and my girlfriend (we’re gay).”

It must be difficult to be a baby. Everything must be so confusing.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
That baby has no idea why her parents put her in that uncomfortable outfit. She doesn’t anticipate that an old man in a robe is going to dunk her head underwater today.
I stare at her pink face as she screams. I relate to her. She’s uncomfortable and confused, just like I am. Why am I here? Why are you doing this to me? Why are we wearing these ridiculous clothes?

All I can think about is poor, sad Rosemary and poor, dead Jim.
“Pull it together!” my life force instructs my body from the ceiling above me.
I can barely inhale.
“You don’t even know Rosemary and Jim!”
“I know! I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” I explain to my spirit, hysterical.

“Have you ever dated someone you regret dating now?”
I thought about it.
“I’m probably the person people regret dating,”