Maybe Next Time

by Cesca Major

The way you continue to thrust books on me because you don’t trust people that don’t read.

We worked and we hustled and we moved through our days at a frantic pace—for what? To pass each other like worker bees.

I was always moving on to the next thing on the endless To Do List that would never fuck off.

As I got under the covers, Miles and Poppy frantic downstairs, Poppy screaming my name, Miles crying for his father, I stuffed the pillow over my head, muffling their agony.

It was the first time I thought it. That I wanted to die. I wanted to be dead. I couldn’t do this anymore.

“We always say we never have any time but you do, you now have limitless time with your children and the man you love. It’s not all bad. It could be a sort of gift.”

I’d been missing so many of these small, precious moments, not just in this loop but before too, leaping ahead on the To Do List in my head rather than pausing to look around, to feel, to taste, to smell: to live.

“I used to think I could stop it; it literally made me lose my head. But eventually it made me realize how much time I’ve wasted on the wrong things, the wrong people, when all I wanted was more time with you.”

but I remember the plea I made to whatever higher power might be listening as I fell.

Maybe when any of us dies we will always say it isn’t time, that we need another day, another hour, another minute. How lucky we two were then, to get this time. What a gift.

If this is really real, if this is really my goodbye and I don’t get to be with you for the rest of our lives, promise me that you will be happy. Choose to live for the both of us. Know that no one could have loved you more or been prouder of you. If I really die tonight then I die knowing no one could have made me happier. Our love, our life together, has been the best thing that ever happened to me.