This is what it will be like someday.
I had to take mom to the emergency room tonight and there I sat for six hours, in hospital purgatory. They admitted her to keep an eye on a patch of cellulitis on her leg. I was drained when I got to her apartment and I forgot what was waiting for me on the other side of the door.

"This is what it will be like someday," he whispers in my ear as I stand frozen in the dark. I was twelve and she was in the hospital the last time he spoke these words to me. I couldn't stop crying and I never went back to our apartment until she came home. "This is what it will be like someday." I'm twelve again as I stand in her apartment and I can't reach the light switch because my hand weighs a thousand pounds. He makes me look at her things through sickening yellow street light. This is her life and I can see remnants of her everywhere, but she's nowhere to be found. There's only the absence of color and the absence of her incessant talking, punctuated by laughter. She never seems to stop talking, but tonight there's only him mocking me. "This is what it will be like someday." My throat is tightening and my eyes begin to burn. I slap at the wall until I'm blinded by fluorescent light and he is quiet.

I throw her things on the desk and dash back to the door as he stands in the corner, smiling at my back. I hear him calling after me as I put the key back into the lock, "This is what it will be like someday."