If I lay on that big, white bed for along time,
will you help me find my Father?
If I put tubes in my arm
and didn't eat for a week,
would you show me where he is?
Will the robot standing next to my head feed me
coordinates through rhythmic beeps and blips and red flashing lights?
I will do that.
I will shrink in my bed
and let my hair shed off like snake skin
and let my skin wrinkle like I had been in the bath tub for too long
and leave the windows wide open so my children can watch.
My lungs will burn out
and you'll put a mask on my face
and add one more tube to the collection
in the crook of my elbow,
adding more weight
as I lose mass
just like my Father.
And after countless times of being told,
"You have his smile,"
I will truly know what they meant
when my lips become sandpaper
and my tongue becomes parchment
and my teeth hollow out in gradients of pale moon yellow.
The iron from my blood
will add zest to every wheezing hack
and trickle down my throat like the morning dew
watering the growing weeds in my lungs.
I will do nothing but blink my crusting, glazed eyes
when my family cries at my bedside.
I will not flinch as their shouted cries echo the hallway
or look up as they throw their hands to the sky,
begging to a name I had long turned away from.
Would I find my Father if the flesh of my cheeks sunk into its bones
and my face was contoured by the ugly shadows in its
every crevice?
Even then, I would not find my Father.
I would not find my Father
until the white coats stand over my bed,
prodding me with pens and magnifying glasses and stinging needles,
and finally tell my family there is no chance.
I would nto be my Father until I refuse to cry
or scream
or become angered
or say goodbye.
I will be relieved that after countless months of being dead,
they finally declare my pulse gone.