Ants

Ants are coming to life again. The really tiny ones, spilling in from who knows where, to converge on a miniscule chip crumb. It reminds me of when P dropped a peanut under his chair. He liked to eat the ones with shells, I guess it was something to do after he went blind. Really it was slim pickins for entertainment considering we both lived on the computer and the text to speech software still barely made anything accessible. The internet is a clusterf*** of terribly designed websites.

Anyway last spring he was sitting there all cute and covered in bits of peanut shells. He had a special chair to help him up because his knees were weak from all the drugs. He lost a peanut through all the motors and mechanisms, and the next day the ants had made a superhighway underneath and were swarming around it. He was so sorry.

I wish I could tell him it didn't matter in the least, it was just a stupid peanut. I'm pretty sure I did at the time, but I want to tell him none of that crap mattered. He would struggle to find a frozen meal or a yogurt in the fridge on his own and make a mess and be so sorry, and all I cared about was that he felt bad and I wanted to protect him. He'd get stuck in some menus on the tv remote trying to listen to his favourite channels and was frustrated and worried he'd messed some settings up. I wanted to scream at all the things that were designed poorly. At the descriptive video service that required going through a pile of visual-only menus to turn it on, and was only really available for Corner Gas and sometimes stand-up comedy (absurd). I wanted to collect him in my arms and tell him I could make it all right and not to worry, I would just love him enough and the cancer would disappear. I want to tell him over and over again that only he mattered.

I wish he was here, the walls don't talk back.