I'm so angry that my last image of you is of your lifeless body filling the satin-lined coffin. Orange makeup painted across your face with folded hands resting atop the three buttons of your first-class suit. The dent across your forehead, deep and jarring. The unforgiving metal bar forever imprinted on your face when you collapsed.
I hate that I still imagine you gasping and calling out for help in those last moments. No longer can I hear the timber of your voice. Instead the distant echoes of your whisper float down the concrete hallway in front of windows and out into nothingness. No one heard you. No one saved you. You died alone.
I hear my brother's tormented scream. His hands gripped the wooden railing on the back porch as he threw back his head and stared up to the sky. This glass-breaking anguish flooded his veins and escaped his mouth. He challenged God that day, maybe even cursed him as grieving tears rolled down his cheeks.
The cracks came the first time you called him a name. They widened when you punched him in the face and when you ignored him. He strove to be the perfect son. This unattainable version of himself that couldn't exist because you broke him like life had broken you.
I'm so angry because I'm left to pick up the shattered pieces - my three big brothers, who never learned to become men because their father could not open the window to let the sober air in.
Because their father didn't tell them that it's okay to cry and be afraid because real men feel.
Because their father didn't show them how to stand up to that fear.
How long did they wait to hear you say, I'm proud of you?
Now the windows are grimy and smudged hardly letting any light through. As if the moment your coffin sealed, so did their hearts. Hammered shut by nails you began shaping the moment they took their first steps and uttered their first words. Nails you drove deep now rusty and neglected.
They haven't the hammer to pull those nails out and push themselves open eventhough they each long to see the sun.
I hate that while I miss you, I'm glad you're gone.
I hate that I still imagine you gasping and calling out for help in those last moments. No longer can I hear the timber of your voice. Instead the distant echoes of your whisper float down the concrete hallway in front of windows and out into nothingness. No one heard you. No one saved you. You died alone.
I hear my brother's tormented scream. His hands gripped the wooden railing on the back porch as he threw back his head and stared up to the sky. This glass-breaking anguish flooded his veins and escaped his mouth. He challenged God that day, maybe even cursed him as grieving tears rolled down his cheeks.
The cracks came the first time you called him a name. They widened when you punched him in the face and when you ignored him. He strove to be the perfect son. This unattainable version of himself that couldn't exist because you broke him like life had broken you.
I'm so angry because I'm left to pick up the shattered pieces - my three big brothers, who never learned to become men because their father could not open the window to let the sober air in.
Because their father didn't tell them that it's okay to cry and be afraid because real men feel.
Because their father didn't show them how to stand up to that fear.
How long did they wait to hear you say, I'm proud of you?
Now the windows are grimy and smudged hardly letting any light through. As if the moment your coffin sealed, so did their hearts. Hammered shut by nails you began shaping the moment they took their first steps and uttered their first words. Nails you drove deep now rusty and neglected.
They haven't the hammer to pull those nails out and push themselves open eventhough they each long to see the sun.
I hate that while I miss you, I'm glad you're gone.
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