I remember Rosalie, my grandmother
not a rose but a worn thorn among flowers
saying it was the doctor who killed him.
"It was no accident!" she screamed.
"They feed him poison because they
thought he was a head case."
I stood there, in the middle of
a perfect suburb that I didn't live in.
Clean sidewalks and quiet streets,
Jaybirds trading tunes with Hummingbirds.
My mom, saying nothing.
Building was something he loved
a bicycle pieced together from the
parts of a thousand different things,
a homemade coffee machine
that looked like a robot,
a model of the titanic as big as
a queen sized bed.
A great person once speculated that,
maybe
death comes to you in whatever form
you want it to, and I like to think
that it came to him in the form of
a giant Lego castle, opening up to let
him in and welcome him as their new king.
I hope his death came to him in Lego's,
because it came to me in the form of
a 2,000 foot plummet.
"Your dad died."
My mom said that two days
before Christmas break back in 2004
She'd just picked me up from school.
That day in P.E. I'd had hard rocks thrown at me
for being a minority
and my English teacher heckled me
because I supported gay marriage.
I'd spilled milk all over my uniform.
and I'd lost the money I've been saving for two months.
Now my mind went back to all of that,
as I thought I had misheard her.
I said nothing and she repeated it
"Your dad died."
I heard the sound of crackling in my ears
from my theory of hearing a mistake breaking.
the indifference on her face was
astonishing, but not unsurprising.
They'd be divorced alas
their past mistakes had sparked friction.
I had only seen him 6 times in
the last 6 years
and she was full of more hate
and false compassion than actual love.
then, and even now, I know
this isn't feeling like home.
The cause had been an accidental overdose.
Meds for his maniac, million mile thoughts,
and painkillers for his broken arms.
Mix'em and you've got
the worst kind of elixir.
The poisoned apple had been bitten,
and the curtain had fallen.
crying was reserved
for mental breakdowns,
when the weight of the two
vultures that sat on my shoulders
had grown to great
and my own mind had eaten too much of me.
And that is why I didn't shed
tears until much later,
the day i saw a 10-second video
recorded by him.
Reenacting the scene of a musical,
he held on to a random street pole
and spun and once done
said
"Hey, Jasmin. Hey, sweetheart"
Beep
end of recording.
How that single moment changed me
is difficult to describe
hearing those words,still
now ringing in my ears like a maddening tinnitus
I think made me realize that,
no matter what I'm
doing
saying
writing
Can't shun the world.
I can't seek refuge in the clouds,
never letting my feet touch the ground
I can't shut down when life turns into
a baseball hat and hits me over the head.
that moment , that day,
boot camp had turned into war.
My conscription had arrived
and instead of running, I took it.
now
I am crackled glass
that refuses to shatter
the reflections on the possibilities
of reaching that point where I don't hate.
Everything helped me carry on.
You can find beauty in the most terrible things;
you just have to squint.