Let me be your son I cried,
To hospital gowns and tubes and lights
And the shrinking man that all my life had been strong.
Through mask and visor and gloves and stuffed up
In a deadly mess. He was my Dad.
Yet I was losing him. Have lost him now.
To lies, and happy birthdays, and untested inpatients and lies.
Days, turn to weeks, and months and years and still I
Can’t do more than return to that room
That shitty. Little. room.
In which I begged him not to die
Not to die
Not to die
Not to die
I will bury you in fifteen years not fifteen days,
I pleaded and bargained.
we bought him three months.
I still don’t know if we did right
And he died apologising
To me. To his son.
My sister collapsed in the hallway.
Alarms screaming.
Doctors rushing to her
If you collapse in hospital people help you fast someone should spread the word
My father dying in one room. Ruth unconscious on a stretcher.
She is wheeled in one way, he is slipping away another
Head spinning and crying and reeling and crying and losing and losing and losing them both
‘What do I do?’
I wanted to be goodness.
To be
More than the model
To wander to more than I was due.
To reverse death
i lost.
