He would
sit in the kitchen
singing opera,
or songs in Yiddish.
And every time I would pay them a visit,
he would try to slip a twenty
into my purse
and I would always argue with him
telling him
to keep his money.
He would bring me into the kitchen
and tell me long and boring stories about his trip
to Israel
when he was a boy of only twenty.
"Not much older than you are right now!"
he would say.
And he would talk for over an hour,
and I would squirm in boredom, and make an excuse
to get out of there and go do something else
like watch tv, or text a friend.
When I was seven years old,
not too long after my parents' divorce,
on a mild spring day he sat with me on his apartment balcony
and read me twenty-six picture books,
and followed every sentence with his finger
so I
could learn to read as fast as he did one day.
And later
I fell asleep in his lap, and he didn't move for
hours.
Just to let me sleep.
The day he lay dying in the hospital in
a coma,
I spent eleven consecutive hours by his side
crying.
The day he lay dying in the hospital in
a coma,
I called my then boyfriend and asked him to come keep me company by his side,
and he told me he couldn't because
he was busy with some friend, over at his house,
getting high.
I never forgave him, because he was not even nearly as important
as the most important father figure I've ever had dying of kidney failure when he still had
so much more
to live for.
Now that he's gone, and his name is forever tattooed on my arm, and his memory
forever tattooed in my heart,
I long for his long boring stories just so I can hear his voice again,
even though it annoyed me two years ago.
I want him to slip another twenty into my purse
and pretend I didn't notice,
and later
slip it back into his enormous box of perfectly organized pills.
The things I should have done
when
he
was
still
alive.