Haibun for existential dread

Sunsets come and sunsets go and we watch, one more—like cotton candy melting on our tongue—one more. A cotton-candy sky melting over the city, making even the drab wet concrete feel pretty. One more day, one better day, tomorrow. Enough clouds, the sun is due, as if the sun were a government employee late to his shift. As if life were a stern supervisor we can bribe. Enough clouds, enough rain, please, will you accept this gift of cupcakes and a yearly ultrasound? Perhaps a run surrounded by the morning mist? Some of our offers earn us charitable smiles we drink like sorbets. Heart rate improved, the last scans showed no signs. Well done my children, spells the cotton-candy sky. Keep trying. So, we drink up, one more sunset, one more toast into oblivion, to forget that we are tin clerks on a clock, tin primates on a leash waiting to be called inside for the night, tin soldiers who

shaky-kneed, we all

face the vast unknowable

wielding a toothbrush

NOTE: When I started writing, I thought the meaning of courage was to opt out of the hamster wheel, accept the random nature of life. I thought that was where the haibun was going to lead, to my own belief that courage means to stop bargaining with life, accept that one bad day today is not payment for a good day tomorrow and we could just as well have a dozen bad days or a dozen good ones, with only partial agency on what we get.

After all, what made it so that my grandmother and my cousin (unrelated) both had breast cancer and one lived to almost 100 whereas the other passed in her thirties, despite the progress in medical science between one instance and the other? Stereotypical example, I know, but relevant. I refuse to believe that one had better chips to bargain with life for more years, it feels dishonest and insulting to boot. 

I'm in my thirties myself now, and have gotten here with a host of (luckily mild) physical grievances that started in my childhood. I'm in the process of accepting that some of them will most likely never go away and probably just be compounded by more as the aging process does its thing. And I don't get to decide that I have enough issues on my plate and can't get more. Or that I've gone through them now and therefore I won't get more later on. I find my strength in knowing that the issues I've dealt with so far have forced me to gain familiarity with my body, its boundaries, and its care. Eventually, we all need to learn to take care of ourselves and grapple with limitations. I'm simply learning it sooner rather than later. 

So, it was a surprise to me that in a haibun that was meant to be about the courage of facing life and its capricious nature without bargaining, I ended up going in a completely different direction. Kind of embracing the courage it takes to face a vast unknowable reality armed with our tiny human weapons. I suppose there is courage and worth in the struggle, and sometimes too much awareness of chaos can make us feel like we have no agency and therefore, what's the point? I suppose the point is to enjoy one more sunset.