The Waiting Room

I've been drowning somewhere in outer space over the last few days. Everything is upside down, there is no gravity, no solid ground, nothing to hold on to.

My mind is a million miles of solitude and silence. I try to speak but there is no air. I choke on my thoughts.

Out there in the distance, I can see Earth. I see thousands of years pass by in the snap of my fingers. My life began yesterday and will end tomorrow.

I want to experience all of the lives. I want to see every sunset, in every country. I want to kiss the mouths of a million different lovers, have ten thousand marriages, raise a billion different children, never have children, never marry. I want to experience hundreds of different careers and try on endless personalities.

I want to call the snow-capped peaks of Alaska home, the urban parks of Mexico City, the beaches of Bali, the cafes of Seoul, the alleys of Rio de Janeiro, the valleys of Tanzania.

I want to be black, and white, and caramel. I want to be a petty street criminal, a Jewish businessman, a small-town Christian teenager, a Persian grandmother, a little boy who dreams of growing up to be a fireman.

I want to be everything, forever.

I can't. I can't. I can't and I don't want to choose, and I have to choose, and I'm stuck in the waiting room trying to choose just one life but I'm not a one life kind of person and I don't know if I can force myself to be.

I choke on my thoughts. I am lost in space. I was born yesterday, and tomorrow I will be dead.