June 29,2011

I remember 9 A.M
you’re asleep peacefully
I stop on my way out watching your hair flutter

12 PM
your only son
knocks frantically
calling for me.
No one can find you.
we can’t leave notes on the door and tape on the doorway.
to find you

12:15 PM
your son and I are home.
all search through your bureau
searching for, looking for, an answer
until my sister finds it.
A typed 2 page letter, 12PT times new roman font
you meticulously typed it out, fingers on home keys,
back straight in chair, thumbs on space bar
“You’re all better off without me.”
my mother reads us your final words
for what seems like an eternity
pain rips through the surface as my mother, your wife
sends shards of sharp searing pain in the form of screams
drowning out my sister, your older daughters shackled breathing.
I try not to shatter the wall I’m sitting against
the boiling red hot anger burns through my veins and lodges
into my eyes, all I can see is red.

6PM
they found you at the hospital,
going into renal failure from the Tylenol
your wife doesn’t let us see you for the first few days
she lets your 16 year old daughter take care of us,
she herself struggling to comprehend the situation we were all in
makes dinner while I do laundry and dishes to give her a break
your son confides that he is afraid to cry because he feels he won’t be able to stop.

July 4th 2011
we visit you  it is an awkward,
elephant in the room Miles between all of us and yet no space at all
I can’t breathe
When we leave I hold my brothers hand telling him words my mother had said to me “Everything will be okay.”

August 23, 2014
Its 4 am
I had a dream about it again,
I felt my heart break and re-break
Into a million little sharp pieces
I wake up,
Breath caught
My chest a vice refusing to unclench
And I remember those words.

“Everything will be okay.”
Everything will be okay.”
Everything will be okay.”

Now I know,
It was a lie.