With April's first dawn
I started building a wall
that gloom can not climb

There was a knock in the door
at about six AM

He wouldn't have opened if
he didn't check
through the peephole. It was
his aunt. Why would
she visit at a time
like this?

When he opened the door
she slapped him
across the face. "You *******
monster! You had the money, you
*******! You had the money all along!
You could pay for your mother's operation
and you didn't. You watched
her die in horrible
pains! How can you live with yourself?"

Ah yes, he knew what she
was talking about. But there
was no point explaining. He
closed the door in her face

went back to bed

"Who was it?" his girlfriend asked. "Another
one of your crazy exes?"

"No. It was my aunt who doesn't
have what I call internet education."

"What?"

"Internet education, dear. Rule number
one: not everything you see
on social media is true. Just because
I pose at the wheel of a brand new
Lamborghini doesn't mean I own
the **** car and am therefore
rich as ****, you know?"

"What kind of idiot would think that?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised..."

Dad was fat all his life
Obese
He couldn’t do a lot of things.
Walk without special help
Bathe
Climb stairs
Sit in a normal chair
Drive a normal car
Sleep in a normal bed
And say “I love you, son.”

To draw those words out
of his dad he became a cartoonist,
but that also failed.

And now that his father
was dead,
collapsed face down
on the kitchen floor,
blood seeping out of a head wound,
he struggled to turn him over
on his back
and dipped his finger in the blood
and drew a speech bubble
next to his father’s head
and wrote in it the famous words.

Finally.
“I love you too, dad.”

as a kid
there's nothing
like wasting away inside a tiny
room
sitting on the backrest
of the couch
looking out the window
and seeing her
tread through the rain

a red umbrella covers
her.

Mother

she's going back
to the liquor store