Both of my parents are gone
Dead is what i mean.
They've been both forever
Since this morning.
Alone in a barren home, full of stuff that made a home.
An unwashed pan still on the stove;
An unheard message blinking red
Red like the blip of a weakening heart;
Yet-to-be-foldeds in a dryer
Adjacent to a bone dry washer.
Ask my why i folded their clothes.
Ask me why all the shirts are hung.
And my dad's shirts
I ironed them on the table he
Sits on sat on sits on still
In front of the TV and
Watched watches watching watched
Football.
Starch scorched through mixed in with
The saltwater taffy sweet tang of
A Desperate and Desolate
Forgotten in his floundering. "Fine."
I'm Fine.
Mother smells(ed) of fiber and too often washed hands.
A quilt of disinfectant and babyshit.
A bed of lambs wool and shirt starch
And for a moment we're a family.
Every memory of homecoming and dinner
Calls through the halls now quiet
But for the serpent hiss of aerosol
and the stutter breath of a sobbing child.
My parents are neither dead nor gone
Nor have they ever been.
We, three of us, are alive
the moment we're gone from work
or school
Or everything else that a life is called
But has nothing to do with being alive.
Every tear shed is fallen for a someday.
today I will have fish in the house
the Home
Of my parents, myself, and our dead dog.
I miss him so much.
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