What sanctions our thoughts? Rather Who, right? I mean no harm. I’m not at all articulate, so my mother always said. She doesn’t say much now, thank goodness.
Where was I? Sanctions? Sanctions. A political term now because most minds reflect our bodies; wide eyed, no blinking, and only vaguely noting disasters, years in the making, and newsworthy for about thirty minutes. There’s sanction for you; more like mind control, but what do I know?
Could we just get to work, please? I don’t mean sitting down at a desk and dying. I mean getting out there and cutting down trees and underbrush so I can plan a garden. My grandparents, that’s what they used to do. Plan gardens. Flowers, vegetables, fruit trees. It was beautiful. Mother would leave me there while she was ‘busy.’ I begged her not to sell it after Grandpa died, but you couldn’t tell Mother much nor ask for a thing as far as that goes. Mother sold it, and now there is a trailer park there. Grandma died in a nursing home.
Mother made good though, and she died in her bedroom. It was messy. Mother’s death, even so, beats dying in a room with three other comatose old people staring up at the ceiling. I stayed with Grandma all the way. Grandma would wake up and pat my hand once in a while. Then she was gone. Then so was Mother.
My lawyer said I should sanction my thoughts. I suppose the poor kid is right. I do feel sorry for my lawyer. A young girl. Her hands shake when she is with me. I know she is frightened, not sure why. I mean, there are scarier people in here than me; all tattooed with demons and inverted crosses. Not right at all. My grandparents would be so sad to see them.
She won’t last long, my lawyer. I think she has lasted as long as she has due to pride. A long line of thin and shivering public defenders spending their time paying off law-school debt and defending society’s perpetrators. I picture her graduating from law school, all doe eyed and energetic and then discovering none of us want to be saved. Very disappointing to all concerned. I don’t know, I’m told to sanction my thoughts.
I’ll tell you a secret though, I don’t: I refuse to sanction my thoughts. This sick little society deserves my thoughts. I think about firing squads lately. I’m as sane as the next man. It’s just the next man didn’t have a mother like mine. I know that is no excuse. I’m sure my grandparents would rather I find another garden to tend. I should have, I regret that, the garden, I mean, not my mother.