The Weight of Goodbye.

I can remember him and it’s always ephemeral. Two generations holding tight by one pinky and one tiny hand of hope. The racist bigotry bequeathed by a small town and pale faces has never been so irrelevant as it is in this moment. I have to go to a wake. It is not anyone I know, it is a friend’s boyfriend’s father. A sick, twisted conundrum of negative space which I’m intended to fill. It reminds me of my Grandfather. How his last breath was nothing I’ve heard or will ever hear. I don’t even remember our last hug, our last goodbye just my Grandmother’s enraged tone as I missed the opportunity. And I opened my eyes and I was there…he was there. Lying perfectly in his favorite collared shirt with the American flag draped across the cherry wood of his new dwelling and he looked noble. As if at any moment he’d be stomping off to war yet again to save the country he poured his life into. But he just lays there, sullen with powder etched onto his once rouged flesh. It is all false now. It is an insult to the Earth from which we’ve been born. As if painting life onto the lifeless dignifies its accomplishments. It doesn’t. It’s for the live ones that this is done for. So we may feel a slight chance that he may resurrect like Jesus and walk again. The truth is that he will never walk again, I will never walk the same way again. The guilt burdening down on me like two anvils of shoulds and didn’ts. All those secret resentments I buried in my skin are seeping out and drowning me. Is it possible to miss someone who killed you everyday?