The internet provides little relief so here it is.

My first morning back in the midwest, my mother sent me a text message about my cousin. A valve in his heart collapsed in on itself a while ago from too much pressure but it’s okay because he got a new heart, so lucky at 28 and so soon. Then yesterday. The thing about having parents whose second or third or forth or whatever language is English but your primary language is English and not something else, is that the omission of words that don’t seem all that important right away are actually the most important, the most vital, and you’re going to get crushed because the news is not the same anymore, not even close. That is a lot of words for a simple idea.

Let me document what has happened pre-digestion. The food on the plate. The still warm oven. Before it tastes like anything but the dirt and the sweetness.

I had a dream last night where someone I used to think about still existed in a prominent way, and I think this sort of dreaming and thinking will happen a lot more because it is fall, so it’s time to think about the future/the past a little more than usual. It is the most base thing going to school for years and years taught me—now it is time to expect things to happen, to start up again. It’s been a few years of waking up and coming to work, going home, sleeping, waking up and working and so on, and yet, so many parts of me wait for the acceleration of fall. The change into boots and sweaters, the hearty soups, the planning for winter. I guess those are newer things but not the same thing.

We went on Sunday to see him. We didn’t know what to say but he was alive and there was football on the television. He couldn’t say anything to us so what could we say other than we are here and this is crazy.

It’s going to be a hard few days while our family waits. Lisa will fly in from her posting. My cousins I’ve been close to for almost all my life until the past few years and the relations I don’t know so well and Hoyt’s friends I don’t know at all will camp out in the waiting room and everyone will cry, and I have cried so much about Hoyt, about my family and friends, about distance, about how there are choices, but choosing is so hard, choosing the right thing has never been something I’m good at. I live in the midwest and I don’t like the buildings here, but it was a choice to stay.

I could be a better person, but I probably won’t be. I think this is what I am learning lately. Thinking positively is so difficult, but that’s another choice. I keep looking at Facebook. I’ve unsubscribed to all of the horseshit but now I hone in on this and I want to look away, I want not to trigger all of this dirty crying, but I choose to know the messages everyone writes him, shares with each other, but what happens to all of that if he beats the odds or if he doesn’t. I read an article about this, the effects and relics, I am sure of it, but I don’t know, don’t think I want to know. I could’ve been a better cousin. I could still be if he lives, if we all keep living even if he doesn’t, but I would like him to live, please.