Expiation

[J Hillenburg]

I am going to dispose all pretenses and attack you
straight out here. The language won’t be highflown
and lyrical. This is about expiation, not poetry. I
have met many women who did not possess a wide
assortment of virtues, but you are the first completely
irredeemable whore I have ever met in my life.
Even in my cups, I cannot find anything to recommend
you to another man. Drinking with you wasn’t even
fun anymore.

It often seemed like you were sleeping with every man
who came through the door, and I think you really were.
Your hungers were baffling to me. Your desires were
vague and truly insubstantial. In five minutes of time
I was more of a parent to your children than you had
been in their entire lives. You propelled yourself ever
forward in a world that you firmly believed had long
ago done you wrong.

But it is all on you, whore. You can only blame so much
on family. You can only blame so much on daddy. You
can only blame so much on the men who were openly
cuckolded for your amusement. But, in the end, it is all
on you. You made those choices that saddled you with
children you cannot stand. You drank and smoked years
away and increasingly lived in a fog. You burned every
bridge with a mad zeal and totality that left me rather
amazed.

And I am damn sure how all of this is going to end. The
children will be gone soon, I’m certain of that. I cannot
do anything to prevent that. Nor would I. The children
would be better off in foster homes rather than with you.
You have robbed them of a great deal of their innocence
already.

I can easily see you killing yourself. It would be your style.
Dead in a jail cell or a hotel room. Maybe dead in a parked
car or a trailer park somewhere in South Florida. Between
grief and nothing, I’ll take grief.

You chose nothing such a long time ago.