Overwhelming sense of death.
Consumed my thoughts, my actions.
I grabbed onto anything
and held as The Fall began.

Sudden jolt and I am aware
Soft cries come from downstairs
it is too early, something is instantly
wrong.

The drive to my house is long
the last moments of being blissfully ignorant.

Pull up
the driveway is filled with
cars, I don’t understand.
The front door, rushed,
People everywhere
demeanor drops
My mind races with the Intangibles.

Led away, muffled cries
then panic,
Hysteria, disbelief, dreaming right?

Little brother sits softly on my mother’s bed
he doesn’t understand, I don’t understand
as she tells us about
a heart that failed
a heart that stopped
a heart that was too large, too generous
to handle.

Crying. Stop. Shower
Naked, yelling to a god
that no longer exists
coughing as steam rises
apologizing for nothing.

It was the last sentence
I spoke
It was the last time I couldn’t
bear to look.

Screaming episodes
an ambulance
blood in his mouth
the phone and anticipation
screaming from the top to emergency workers
“Hurry the **** up”

I sat crying on two small steps
trying to accept this desperate shell,
this blind man was my dad.

Two months later, a room full of people
where my friends saw me cry for the first time
trying to accept that some solemn heavy casket
was the same man.