Call clear and wake me up. Tell me my eyes will open again. I’m growing to friendly with the inside of my eyelids. Don’t stop talking or i’ll drift away, i’m trying to find the exit but the signs out. Call clear, shock me back to life, I’m growing to familiar with the lack of a heart beat. I want to use my lungs on my own again, I want to be unhooked, so call clear, and if you can’t, if you won’t, then unplug the machine forcing my lungs to expand. Tear away the toobs pushing my blood in circles, rip off the bags and wires demanding that protein reaches me. But don’t say goodbye, because if you do, I might just have to come back only to leave again.
Haunt me. If the lost can haunt the found, then why not vice versa? But i’m not lost… You keep saying that, so why am I not here with you? Except I am, but legally, i’m not. It makes sense when you’re not there, but trust me, once you’re gone, things are all together confounding. I’m just a kid. I was--Am going to turn nine soon. We were going to have a party, call clear! Call me back to you. I don’t know you, but they’re saying if anyone can save me it’s you. Do you really want that guilt when you fail? I can leave, I can go past the point of retrieval if you want. No one will blame you, especially not me, i’ll be gone, I won’t mind.
So call cle--
And brightness engulfs, and heat, and sound, and my eyelids are growing distant, and sound is rushing in, and I miss the dark so I start to slip back to it. But the hands… my mothers and fathers hands, and your hands, reaching and pulling me back from the edge. Grabbing at my hair and filling my eyes with worry and no matter how much I want to go or stay, the dark is pulling at me, and you’re pulling back, and i’m afraid if I let the dark take me you’ll go to, so I run from it. And wake up to a world where my lungs function on their own and the shock of living is rushing back and I suddenly remember what it’s like to have a pulse. And a heart beat, and a future.