In the Month of May

"Don't say tomorrow, please, I can't wait until then." I stare at the ground, biting my lip and squeezing my eyes shut.

How do I tell you that tomorrow might not even happen? That I might not even make it to then? I can feel your hands on my arms, gentle but firm. I can feel your eyes begging me to look up and say that I can make it tonight, that I can spend the night.

"I wish I could, but I can't, I really really can't." I wait for you to let go and turn away. I wait for the warmth that your body is passing to me to leave, floating into the air that is freed with distance between us.

But you stay close. "You've said that for the past week." I shake my head, but it's true. It's the only possible thing I can think of to say to you, other than the real reasons I can't go with you.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, I get it, really. I mean, there's always tomorrow right?" To be perfectly honest, part of my mind is wondering why it's such a huge deal for me to stay the night, why it's so important to you, but the larger part, and the whole of my heart understands completely.

I sigh as you turn away from me, feel the cold replace the warmth that hovered between the smallest places between us. I wrap my arms around my body to hold myself together as I start to walk towards the door. I hesitate.

"Hey, wait." I'm still facing the door, but I can hear the halt of your footsteps on hardwood floors. I turn around to see your anxious eyes. "I need to tell you the real reason why I can't stay."

We sit outside on the apartment steps, bathed in streetlight glow. Our breath fogs the air above us. I've written this scene a thousand times, witnessed it a million, but it never loses it's novelty, it's pure innocence drenched in mystery.

I stare at the concrete beneath our feet while I speak.
"I'm going to the hospital after I leave here. That's why I can't stay, because I have to spend my nights sleeping in a hospital bed. They always want to keep an eye on me, I'm shocked they let me out during the day. They say it's good for me though, to get out in the sun, to live out my last moments. And my God, all I want to do is stay here with you, stay in your bed and wake up at noon to find you right there beside me, but I can't."

"Why do you have to stay in the hospital?"

I quiet, eyes locked on concrete, fingers wringing themselves together.
You know instantly. We've been through this plenty of times before.

"It's back? I thought they said it wouldn't be back for five years at the least."

"I guess they were wrong."

You shake your head, hold my hand. I lean against your chest, dreading the moment I have to leave to lie in the stark and pale hospital bed. I can feel the starched sheets waiting for me.
I think about tomorrow, how my tomorrows are limited, counted one by one until the one that fails to arrive. It will arrive for everyone else, as usual, but for me, it will forget to grace me with its fresh bright light.
We take tomorrows for granted, for no one really knows if they will come. Even on the brink of the end, people still have hope for another tomorrow, and when that some kind of miracle happens to bring it, they hope for more and more and more. I think that, eventually, the tomorrows just get too tired to keep gathering up strength for that one person.

It takes a lot of strength for a tomorrow to appear, and it takes that strength from us. Our weakness in old age is from being drained by every tomorrow we have witnessed. They are our feebleness, our decline. They drain us until there is just nothing else left.
But sometimes, they forget, or they aren't allowed to appear. There is only one thing that controls tomorrows, and that is the present. The present can stop a tomorrow in its track, like a brick wall. It's why some people go too early, too young; they are not empty of energy, only slammed into the wall of presents that can kill a tomorrow in a heartbeat.

We sit and take in the cold. You keep your arms around me, keep me warm and close to your own beating heart. Its beats aren't numbered as precisely as mine are, it can beat and have the present miscount a few.

When it comes to tomorrows, the present is just as clueless as us. It counts and ticks off each heartbeat, but it doesn't know when it can stop, it just does. Tomorrows give it hints, but they are subtle and rhymes, hard to decipher. The present is just as in the dark as we are.

"We should go."
I am shaken out of my thoughts by your words. I wonder about the we, although I know exactly what you mean.

I nod, smile, and stand.
"We should, I mean, after all, tomorrow is waiting, and I've heard it's not too patient."