Healing Machine for Charles
For the disappointment of not amounting to anything
Remember all the promise you had when you were younger, everyone who believed you'd do great things. Think of all the awards, the hard-earned good grades, the praise. Think of everything you overcame to set yourself on the right path.
Now remember when you went off-course. List all the reasons it was your own damn fault. Take your time. Blame yourself hard. Look back along the path and gather all the regrets that grow wild there. Pick them up one by one. They will be more than you can carry, but carry them anyway. Put them in whatever's big enough to hold them all - the bathtub, maybe. Run the hot water over them, letting them bubble and boil. Step into the lumpy soup of them. Become one with them, just one big bag of human regret. Soak in there till your skin gets pruney and the bath gets cold, till a thin gray film covers the stagnant water. Stay until you die of boredom. Ignore anyone who calls, texts, knocks on the door and tells you not to wallow. Allow yourself a wallow for the ages. Do not eat. Do not sleep. Stay there, all goosebumpy and shivering, till specks of mold begin to grow between the tiles.
Stay until the scum on the surface of the water grows into a film of green algae. Stay until the first guppy is born. Watch it swim between your legs, hatch a hundred guppy children, and raise them in a city of your old trophies. Stay while the first tadpoles grow fat in the shelter of your football helmet. Listen to the chorus of frogs in the bathroom at night, floating on the lily pads of your first-place ribbons. Look up at the snails hanging down from the ceiling with all its mildew and peeling paint. Watch the dragonflies mate mid-flight. When you begin to feel the minnows nipping, ripping, tearing away at your skin, resist the urge to get out. Stay until the old skin is gone. Listen to the new skin grow.