When you left, despite me knowing you'd leave, the shock was still apparent.

The bedroom light is left on.
I take melatonin to fall asleep.
My stomach is always empty despite eating.
I fixate on your last breath.
Your chest rising.
Your chest falling.
Your quiet little sigh.
Your face tensing and then relaxing.
I make a mini shrine on my dresser out of your pictures.
I call my dad and realize that's gone too.
I dream of roads I've never traveled on.
I dream of flying to Texas and leaving here forever.
I dream of escaping.
The house is empty.
No one tells you of the shock or the trauma.
You just understand, that as soon as you can comprehend it, Death is for us all--young and old, terminally ill and seemingly perfectly healthy, parent or child, high school alumni or dropout, wife or fiance, girlfriend or best friend, young and old

I keep wilting carnations in my room.
Anything with an expiration date reminds me of the loss.
I try to remember your commanding voice and your loud laughter.
I try to love.
I try to care.
I keep your pictures to remember your face before...you changed.

Now all I try to forget are the changes.
I try to forget you saying you weren't hungry.
Your food scraping off the plate into the garbage.
You saying you weren't hungry.
You sleeping in until 10am.
How you used to get up at 6am sharp every morning.
You saying you weren't hungry.
You not talking anymore.
You...emaciated and frail.
You...changing.
Your pain.
The sound of the concentrator humming.
The mechanical noises of the defibrillator and its exhausted sigh.
You saying you weren't hungry anymore.
Your last breath.
Your quiet little sigh.
Your serene smile.
Everything was so tired, grandpa.
Everything was so tired...