The Eighth

The Internet is getting too small for me.
The default settings are too hard to see.

I didn’t necessarily want to begin this with a cute little couplet, but I’m not against its presence, either. A cute little couplet to mark the beginning of my body’s downfall. A small rhyme to ring in my (hopefully slow) decline. Not that it’s just beginning only now. It’s been in the works for a bit now. Maybe a bit longer than a bit. Since my 20s my teeth have been gradually transitioning from the traditional organic “tooth” material to a more modern blend of metal, resin, and porcelain, thanks to bad genes and even worse habits. In my 30s I discovered that “bunion” is not an adorable portmanteau of “bunny” and “onion” but what the growing disfigurement on the side of my foot is called. Or, more accurately, on the sides of my feet. And of course, there’s the relentless tug of gravity tirelessly pulling my body ever closer to the grave.

Here in my 40s, it’s my vision. At first, it was just needing reading glasses. More of a distinguishing accouterment than anything else. Just a little accessory to add to my charm. Something, I liked to imagine, that made me look a little sophisticated when I read. I only need them when I begin to get tired or if the light is a little too dim. I assumed. I don’t think that’s what the doctor actually said but I feel like that’s what she meant. I can read between the lines when the printing is big enough. But now? Well now, it’s not just books I need my glasses for. Now the writing on my phone screen looks blurry pretty much whenever I pick it up.

What had before been a falling apart of my body— terrifying enough in its own right— has become something deeper: a severing of my consciousness from the world. An assault on my very senses! It’s morphed from my inability to affect the world to my inability to detect the world (I’m such a sucker for a rhyme.) And that shift made me feel like I was beginning to truly understand what it will be like to slowly sink into death.

Or it would have, anyway, if I hadn’t suddenly remembered that it’s been a while since I could have a decent conversation in a club. Or bar. Or, really, any party or public place where music is playing. Why? Because of my— what?— hearing. It’s been a long time since I could hear well in noisy spaces. Probably a decade or more, making my vision impairment the second severing of my consciousness from the world.

Or it would be, anyway, if I hadn’t suddenly thought about the fact that forgetting about a decade-old ear problem simply because I’d gotten kinda used to it is a clear sign of cognitive decline (but not for rhymes). Which pushes the vision thing to the third severing of my yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, I was thinking all of this because the goddamned dog ruined my reading glasses. Again. I forgot to put them away and I didn’t hear her chewing them, although I should have seen it coming.

Things go wrong with my body quite often
As I transition into a coffin.