Limbo

The evening before an important day feels less like a moment and more like the hollow space between them. It’s strange, being in limbo. It’s like having thirty minutes before bed – too little time for an episode of my favorite show, too much for a few pages from a book I know will keep me up. I could call in sick, but then I’ll be twenty dollars short on all my expenses and torn between dodging a landlord or the bank for a month. All while bracing myself for eviction or repossession.

Do you ever wonder if Limbo is real, in the spiritual sense? Do your contributions outweigh the sin of your own existence enough to warrant a century of proving your worth to an indifferent celestial jury? I imagine mine don’t. I’ve done great things, sure, but is helping the homeless worth more than the death I caused my mother just so I could take my first breath? By this time tomorrow I’ll be a father, did I mention that?

My wife is in the car waiting for me and I’m here in the recliner contemplating overdose so I don’t have to witness her death at the hands of a child I never expected I’d want. But I do want it, and that’s the scariest part. When it kills her, will I ever look at it the same? What if I snap two weeks from now and suffocate it in its crib? What if I forgive it long enough for it to stand on its own two feet only to let it watch me eat a bullet while it mashes peas into its highchair? What if none of that happens, and it grows up like I did and one day suffers the same fate? My phone buzzes in my pocket.

“My water just broke!”

My heart just broke. I can’t breathe.

I head out the front door.

What if I drive us both off a cliff?