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Mortality. It was totally irrelevant only weeks ago, no, days ago. It was a concept, an idea so unfamiliar that it barely crossed my mind, I was so caught up in youth.

But now, I feel it.

In the quiet of my bedroom at an ungodly hour, with nothing but the ticking of a keyboard to keep me coherent, I feel it. It's cold, the acknowledgment of every escaping breath, every muscle spasm and function. I feel my shell aging and my force losing moment after moment. I can't rewrite any of it.

Sixteen years. Sixteen short, short years and now I know more than ever that I'm human.

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Around ten fifteen AM on the twenty-fifth of October, Sterling and I were driving over to my mother's house to pick her up for a doctor's apointment. I was due for a check-up since te accident with my head only days before, and of course mother, being family, was insistant on joining. After pulling into the gravel driveway, Sterling turned the key from our rusty, red Subaru and hustled up the flight of stairs to call out the remaining member of our clinic-bound party.

Long moments passed before he returned, shaking furiously with his cellphone in hand. His eyes shone with a sort of shock that I'd never seen in him before.

"What's the address here?"

His lips quivered as he demanded, his vocal chords seeming to choke out each syllable.

I gave him the numbers and names of where my mother lived before asking if there was a problem. He seemed to ignore my pleas for explanation and answered the stranger on the phone.

"Dead."

I heard nothing else.

Whatever the case, in any occasion, this word was not reassuring. I felt my heart slam into the acidy pits of my stomach, and senselessly I rushed up the stairs, through the broken down door and into the messy living room of my mother's apartment.

Sterling stopped me before I could go farther, and warned me that what I might see in her bedroom wouldn't be pretty. I pushed past him with an anxious whimper and entered the quiet room.

My flesh in blood, my goddess, my mother lay face down against the brown shag carpet, her blonde waves serving as a curtain against her lax face. Her body was slumped over, naked, a disgusting shade of blood-shot purple that was almost inhuman. Splotches of mildewy yellow scattered across her bare back.

My fingers came to touch the arch of her side, and to my despair her skin was cold. I called her name, I screamed and pounded but she couldn't hear me. She was gone.

Backing into the doorframe, I fought back hysteria as I shouted protests;

"No. No!"

A sign of consciousness, I begged for her to stir or heave one breath, some reassurance of her vitality.

But no. She remained chilled and without heartbeat.
Dead.

Not even the tears of family could undo the damage done by time and aging, the flavor of mortality most bitter and surreal.

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When I write it like a story, it almost belongs to somebody else. A reality totally parallel to mine. It's imperonal and distant. No more questions and woe, just words that paint a horrific picture, words that represent but make no difference in a world of images that reflect nothing more than hope or bitterness.

And when the story is done, my heart sinks all over again.

I'm dying as I write this. My heartbeat becomes shorter by the second. I exhale, and a year passes so quickly. One breath can mean the conclusion to my lifetime.

Everything is so temporary.