When the phone rings in the middle of the night—well, you know the rest. At 3:00 a.m. on July 5, 2012, my sister was on her way to pick me up to attend the death of our father. I’ve written about the events leading up to and following it so often you’d think it would be out of my system three days from its 13th anniversary.
Each year, the scar seems to bleed, prompted only by the calendar and the practice fireworks blasts in the not-so-distant distance.
Lágrimas for my father It is permissible to grieve with pay for three days but then you must put your pants on and stagger in trenching the carpet with your heavy plank walk cutting a new path back to life in a lidless box. Days, I am the sick center of a vortex and nights I am a leaden cloud hovering below myself. I wrangle now with words that once I wrought make coworkers solicitous and take a lengthy lunch salad greens and chicken, avocados and acedia aromatic tea to mask the stain of a man’s decay. My lap mildews from the damp of my tears which I examine under a microscope: Fatherless salt and water, prolactin, repentance. Do not underestimate the acidity of tears. They can rust even the rebuttal of laughter split me mind from body, flood my nest. I am a baby bird on a limb, empty gaping maw, remembering my antediluvian days and waiting waiting for these damned feathers to dry. If people are cars, you were a monster tractor (even if you sometimes snoozed behind its wheel) If people are trees, you were the elm, beloved. If people are rocks, you are the heart-shaped pebble in my hand, beach memento from a fatherless friend. On the drive home, the decrescendo of my daddy’s song meets its unrelenting fog crescendo counterpoint stereo static and this noisy hiss of misted sluggish air. Maybe it’s just the carburetor, honey, but I am broken down on the shoulder, white rag of surrender tied fast around my arm.
Last month, I lost two former friends, and I didn’t hear about either death until a few days ago.
One of them was my housemate in the ‘80s. I loved Matt Burke. My fondest (or perhaps I should say my most vivid) memory was of him getting up in the late morning, pouring himself a bowl of cornflakes, then pulling a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and pouring it on the cereal. I don’t remember the last time I saw Matt. It was more than 30 years ago.
The other was a new friend I’d not met in person until April 2023. We connected instantly through a mutual and talked on the phone like a couple of schoolgirls. He kept threatening to buy me a tube top when I got a breast reduction. He had a big grin and was smarter than most people. He and my dog Ziggy were best friends.
I worried about Steve all the time because he was in poor health and would lose touch for a week or more, sometimes because he was in the hospital without a phone. He told me early on that he gave people one chance, and if he thought you’d somehow fucked that up, bye, Felicia. I watched it happen in real time with at least seven others, always because someone didn’t behave in the way he thought they should have behaved. In November, after a nine-month absence from my life (he even blocked me on Facebook), he texted. I couldn’t see my way through to respond.
I loved him, albeit briefly.
Now, both he and Matt are gone forever, and I feel nothing: no grief, no sadness, no sense of loss. I’m trying to understand why, but it’s a pointless exercise. I am appropriately sad at the right times. There’s nothing wrong with me.
It is July 2nd, and I’m thinking only about my dad. And, of course, the death of democracy. Maybe there’s no room at this time for more grief.
Over (My Dead Body) Where will they find the body? They hardly knew the mind. Beach motel, a scenic overlook, fluffy rubble of a fallen sky? Or god forbid a hospital, eyebrows gone and metastatic rage stifled by the drip drip drip. Will I be clutching pills or pearls of wisdom, photographs, a gun, my heart, batman mask pulled down B carved in my chest? Will they find me slumped across this poem, cobwebs from my fingertips to pen smell of long-extinguished fire, sound of curtains flapping
Soundtrack for this post by San Junipero. My father’s outgoing message begins this song.
Your poems are complex and have weight. It’s difficult to read them without relating my own grief to them. I need to write a book about my mother. Thank you for being vulnerable like this in public. It is brave.
These poems are beautiful and brilliant, thank you for sharing. I’m sorry to hear about your friends. So much grief right now. Hugs to you.