After

The wash basin was once white, I know it was. I can remember scrubbing it faithfully every Saturday morning along with the toilet and the shower when water was still flowing from every faucet, when my muscles still understood my commands. Once friendly, the hazy mirror over the sink does not answer my sideway glance, so I keep my eyes cast down upon the rust and grime competing with the clustered strands of hair falling one after another from my head. If I were to walk into the kitchen and take a knife from the counter and slice myself open, would I choose a wrist or would I be brave enough to reach for an ear, connecting the dots all the way to its twin? These walls can no longer keep me safe as they once did, from the cold, from the enemy, from intelligence; so I may as well live outside with the remaining feral. Don't tell me the wounded deer does not know when it is time to lay down and die; surely he does, closing his eyes gracefully, so suddenly as if he had just opened them for the first time. So what about me? Why am I still searching for sustenance in the cold darkness of hell when I know damn well there is nothing left for me to pick up with two fingers from the ash; hand to mouth is gone like the wind so is my desperate attempt to lick the murky ground with my tongue down on my knees like a dog, expecting a result that will keep me alive for the next day, the next hour, the next minute, another second; for what?

My father once took me hunting in the dead of winter many years ago before the blast when I was too young to see what I can't unsee. He said, "Humans have to eat. The animals understand about dominion." Do they? Or are they just smarter than us in their understanding of the rhythm of nature in a way that humans will never understand, since if we did, would I still be clinging to life?