Pilar Gonzalez

The Limbo Home

Warm bodies in a line, some crouched
on yellow-stained couches others cooped
in glass cubicles awaiting judgement in this
fluorescent purgatory. Howls and whimpers
rise up to the polished surface, white coats
floating past, descending the stairs, ready
to save a life (or take it). I was here yesterday,
just as I am today, just as I had been for weeks.
Assistants to the Pearly Gates, clad in blue,
zip around with clipboards in hand; finally
one approaches asking me to sign hers,
looking at the warm bundle of nine years
on my lap, a slobbering shaking mess.
Name ma’am, then signature ma’am: Yes
I know (Can we skip it), What am I doing here
(Why did I call for help), Please we’re scared
(I’m scared), but I sign with one hand, a barely
legible mark like all the ones before it; I blink
and I’m still here, a little further down the line
but that’s it, and I turn to find a woman at
the very end, wiping her ruddy soaked face,
eyebrows scrunched and shoulders shuddering
as her daughter rubs her back—I know
what the verdict is, and selfish as it sounds
I’m relieved I’m not her, not yet. I was close
one time, white coat floating towards me with
another clipboard: sign here, and here,
and here, and if anything happens, just know
we did our best (but really what they meant
was it’s out of our hands), God will do the rest,
Jesus take the wheel, all dogs go to heaven,
so here are the facts:

if you excise that angry
weed of flesh, it may grow back
faster than you can keep up with,
so fast, you won’t recognize the
body it sunk its roots into. Next
is purging the earthly flesh of
everything it holds dear for
that slim chance of salvation;
like Job before you, miracles
come at a price you never
agreed to pay.

Okay, I nod, alright, I nod some more—
a warm snout pushes between my hands,
a white-speckled face that dreams of today
instead of what comes after. I realize
there are no walls, not even a line: at least
not one that would lead us where
we were meant to be, all this time.

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Pilar Gonzalez is a Filipino-Korean writer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. Her fiction won Ateneo de Manila University’s 28th Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts for Creative Writing, and her works have been published in Lifestyle Asia, Blue Indie Komiks, HEIGHTS Ateneo, and Red Ogre Review. When she’s not busy chasing deadlines, she’s likely people-watching, reading from an endless TBR stack, or doting on her two senior dogs.