perfection Options

[*CrackedRearView*]

Until tonight I had never realized just how perfect the human figure is. As I stood there, isolated in a stark white room, alone in a sea of a hundred, I came to this conclusion. I found that the contours on the hand are perfectly complimentary. As if one day, your hands clasp, and the missing piece to the proverbial jigsaw is recovered.

So hypnotically calming was the idea of human perfection; so healing was the idea that perhaps things, like hands being shaped for one another, are planned, fabricated, executed, committed, and hurled onto the unsuspecting for an ultimately divine purpose; so numbing was the sense of propriety I felt in the connection of two hands.

And then it crashed down; her hands, like mine, were clasped. As if to erase the idea from the forefront of my mind, and as if a simple disconnection could eradicate the throes impeding my emotional stability, I quickly jerked my hands apart, and found pockets for them. Like a child hiding that one forbidden toy.

I remember mine like it's still in my arsenal; as if my wall of electronics, serving only for superficial entertainment, is still complimented by my childhood cap gun.

Oh, what a joy that little vessel of happiness truly was. What excitement it brought; what dolor it ended with. Banished from accessibility forever more, the cap gun dissolved into blurry memory, along with an ample amount of other, more important recollections of time spent with her.

The feeling is indescribable; the feeling of guilt that comes standard when you simply cannot remember your mother's voice without the assistance of an answering machine.

71 times, and counting. It's 27 seconds long, too. She sounds so artificial, yet I just can't bring myself to ignore it. It's as if her recorded message is the only snippet of her addictive, alluring voice that I'll ever be able to retain. As if that tape, that is tucked so tightly into my shirt pocket, is the last morsel of that beautiful voice I'll ever taste.

How ironic that it sits over my heart; the heart that failed. Failed at what it's programmed to do. Failed to love her when it was most important. Failed to do the job any typical son does. The heart that forgot her voice; the voice that first spoke to it. A heart that commits that foul is not a heart at all. Apparently, that must be the void in my chest, because I feel it. I feel it every day she's gone.

She was so beautiful tonight, wearing a white silk gown with exquisite trim. I put my hand on the edge of the casket, and stared in wonder; in paralyzing bewilderment. The stupefaction that such perfection can inflict on the observer is ineffable.

I leaned forward, and placed a final kiss on the very forehead I had kissed so many times. A final kiss; my heart's final attempt to succeed.

I remember, as I gazed my final gaze at this wondrous prototype of a mother, a solitary saline tear made the plunge from my face to hers.

"Don't cry, mom."

And the casket was closed. The hundred left. I stood, arms draped over my mother's final bed, yearning for the chance to exchange 18 years for five minutes.

But it never came. And I stood, a black suit, isolated by four oppressive, austere white walls, admiring perfection.