by L. A. Ballesteros Gentile
I’m forty-three years old. Alone. In an apartment. I pay a couple thousand dollars for rent each month. I move every couple years. The last person I lived with was my mother. She died three weeks ago.
I’m sixteen. It’s Saturday and I’m in New York. Before I live there though. I’m out with friends in the evening. People I’ve only just met. We sing together in Lincoln Center. No one’s there but us, around the fountain, singing plainchant. And I’m happy. And I’m young.
I’m sixty four. I live in Awaji now. Life is quiet. It doesn’t move. I move through it but it doesn’t move. There are farms and waves nearby. The farms are large and silent. They work like a type of clock that existed before we did, unartificial. And the waves are the same each day. In and out. In and out. I watch them. I watch and I write. And sometimes I dream. But mostly I walk and I watch. And I don’t have many neighbors. And the ones I do have don’t speak English. (I’ve only picked up the necessary Japanese. But still more than they assume. So even when we spend time together, eat together on occasion, when I’m invited to go with them to some less rural part of the island or the country, we communicate mostly without speaking.)
I’m eleven. Watching my older brothers play tennis. I’m standing on the side of the hard tru court, watching my older brothers play tennis. They dance and they slide and I love the sound of their shoes digging deep in the terrain, the screech as they slide, burning the rubber patterns off their under-shoe to reach a well-placed shot.
I’m twenty two. I just moved out. I live in an apartment. In NY. I’m excited, generally. I haven’t yet accepted the realities of loneliness or depression. I get sick often in the next couple years. I get diagnosed with a handful of non-fatal diseases. I have daily pills and creams and make jokes for a while when anyone comes over, but eventually stop. I have a few girlfriends, a few boyfriends. But eventually that stops too.
I’m four, I think. Must be. In the hospital. I remember my mom telling me she wanted to take a walk. I remember this being the only reason I went with her. I remember not knowing until much later that she never intended to go on a walk with me. The morning after, I’m wearing hospital pajamas, sitting up on one of those moveable beds, eating fruitloops the nurse gave me.
I’m thirty. Both my older brothers have died. One a couple years ago. The other today. His wife calls. I ask her if my mom knows and she says no. She asks if I’d like her to do it and I tell her no. I tell her it’d better be me. She hangs up. But my mom’s a little gone by this point and there’s no one else to argue with. So I never tell her. And she never asks.
L. A. Ballesteros Gentile (@danteanantonio) is a multidisciplinary artist based currently in Brooklyn, NY. You can find his literary work in The Amazine, Roi Fainéant, Blue Marble Review, and Exist Otherwise, among others.