No one ever tells you
that your momma is
going to die
one day.

Well, really they do
but to believe them
is to believe in the
monster that lives
under your bed
despite the fact that
your momma has told you,
over and over,
that monsters aren’t real.

(You want to believe her
so badly, but are never
quite convinced.)

But,
then comes the time
when she is gone,
having passed away
in the smallest hours
of Monday morning.

Today is Wednesday;
so you’ve  come by
to check on your father
who’s not lived alone
since before you were
born.

The house is empty,
dark, still.
You call out,
worried.

His voice calls back
from the bedroom.

You walk the hallway
expecting to find him
sitting on the edge of
the bed,
tearful,
sorrowful,
fidgeting with some
small thing that once
belonged to your
mother.

Instead,
you realize that you’ve
interrupted a nap.

Though, perhaps 20 minutes
before you arrived,
he was indeed
sitting on the edge of the bed,
head in his hands,
tears on his face.

Now, however,
he lay beneath a blanket,
on his side of the bed,
alone.

He’s nudged up
next to the pillow
on the other side
that waits patiently,
cool, smooth,
for her.

Yet she remains alive inside
of that dark, sleepy house,
and you can feel her there.

Perhaps she is nudged up
next to the man, who is
nudged up against that
smooth, cool,
empty
pillow.


*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2018