Breathless being
Sleeping giant
I poke gently first
then jab violently
wanting to see
if you are made of air and water and muscle and bone.
You deflate
into rubble and decomposed flesh
blackened by the poison
that has run your veins dark
all your life.
You crumble to ash
before my eyes
and just like that
I find I have no father.

I've been warned
but nothing prepares you
for death, dying, goneness
of the one who snuggled you
wide-eyed in his arms
as you took your first breathes
and he looked right past you
into your soul.

Hijacked you were
from the very fingertips of my fate
-not even that-
for that doesn't imply complicity, action
in your own disappearance.

Suddenly, something hatches
from your ashes
growing, shedding flesh all the time
until I am standing where your chest used to be
and it is me.