poetry?

at 456 am i hear you coughing that deep, dry cough you’ve had for several years.

stubborn old man,  you’re old but shouldn’t be.

taking the bottle to head faster and more often than you took breaths.

mom once thought you were looking for memories of your mother,

deep in the caverns of your stuppor.

The woman who left you behind before you felt sure enough to be you.

She was gone before you understood all she could have taught you.

Left in those years before rebellion even mattered.

I often wonder who you would have been had she won against the cancer.

I often wonder who I would have been as well.

Sitting on your chair in the porch, you tell me of how you couldn’t drive to Glendale from the house.

What would have been a 15 minute drive, impossible because of the bubble behind your eye.

Part of me is quick to condemn you for not taking care of yourself.

Suggesting, as my default has been, that you don’t care enough about us to want to live.

But tonight, I wonder how complicated things are in your head,

how messy and interconnected it all must be.

Not unlike the tangled wires you work with.

And it makes me sad.

How your love comes at the expense of your life,

how your pain is the cost of our joy.

How lost you must be when you speak with anger and judgement.

…