I hate that I never said goodbye.
I was only eleven,
and I was a liar,
and I was tired of
hospital beds and crying people and mysterious smells and sounds
and flowers and hymn-singing and
useless tacky balloons that only wasted space,
wilting and deflating after only a few days,
and crumpling to the linoleum into a
shiny crinkled fifteen-dollar piece of trash.
(I thought it was beautiful,
but it was such a waste because
of course you never noticed.)
The February outside was damp and indecisive,
spring one day and winter back the next,
but I would have much rather been out on the freezing cold lawn
than in that tension-filled room of white.
Finally, I could stand it,
once you were home (still in that mechanical bed,
but at least you were in a room with a beautiful stained glass window
and forest green carpet dusted with dog hair)
on that last night
- though of course we could not know it was the last
while we stood in that golden room
and sang you to sleep.
It was terrible-awful to see my father cry
in his father's old navy suit
to be sitting, numb and nonchalant in the first pew
right in the front of the church
right where your slate grey coffin lay
draped in the glorious red white and blue.
And to know that
I had lied when I walked out that door
into the star-sparkled night
because even while I loved you
and love you still
I didn't say goodbye that night.
- February 18th, 2007 -