Sleepless

27

7/13/10

WE’RE ALONE AGAIN. Rose. I’ve done things. Things I believe are right. Things I have to do.

I think you would agree with me. That there wasn’t any choice.

You said I couldn’t take care of her. And I can’t. I can’t take care of her.

She can’t be safe. Not as long as the world is this way.

Jasper says it’s just changing. As if that is a small thing. Which I suppose it is.

Everything is always changing. Look at how you changed me. How we changed each other. How Omaha changed us both.

But it’s still my world. The world where my father and mother met.

Where she called him Peaches. Where I ran away from them to try to find a different way of understanding. Where I met you. This is the world where you wouldn’t let me go. Not that I tried to run. This is the world where my mother died and my father killed himself because he couldn’t live in it without her. This is the world where you got pregnant.

Or is it? Or is that the world that was? Is this already the new world? The world where you got sick. And where Omaha was born. If it is, then it is her world. And she’ll need to know how to live in it.

But only if it has time to breathe.

Afronzo Senior said they were “tapping the brakes.” Trying to slow things down, give the new world a chance to be born.

My daughter’s world. A world that should not have the crimes of the old world polluting its birth.

I have to do something. You understand, Rose. I know you understand.

You said it when we met. I will die one day wandering into traffic. But I’m not wandering. I’m walking straight across all five lanes.

I have to do something. Someone has to do something. Otherwise, why?

I love you.

Good night.