One morning.

It was magnificent. I often recanted the statement after spitting or uttering in anger and exaggeration. Often recanted that I felt that way because really, it’s sad if it happens to anyone. And of course you, too, have a mother. But when I woke up the air felt crispier than a potato chip and little chipmunks, not squirrels, balanced on the branch of my tree and sang songs to me. Most of the songs were from the Grease OST but what was truly amazing to me was that I had never seen a chipmunk before. Always squirrels. These chipmunks were swell guys, I tell you. Boy am I really skirting the point here. I get distracted, you see. But this morning, like I was telling you, everything was so clear. I hummed with electric sense and happiness. My orange juice tasted like the most delicious beverage I had ever had. Time seemed to pause, if just for a quick moment, and don’t ask me how you feel time pausing, but you do, and I sat in perfect stillness basking in the diamond of being alive. And when Mark ran in telling me that you, somehow, were unlucky enough to be struck by a small piece of meteorite falling through the Earth’s patchy atmosphere, that you had somehow been splattered in minutiae across Sunset Boulevard, well, I nearly chuckled! And I felt not one pang of guilt for wishing that on you and I felt absolutely zero sadness for the absence of your shadow. I smiled silently to myself and I poured one more glass of the most delicious orange juice you will never taste and I whispered, “and your mother can go fuck herself, too.”