Stages of Grief

It is Father's Day weekend.

I am coming home tomorrow

and Dad is going to smirk and

hook me in for a hug that we will call

obligatory and uncomfortable,

and we will hold it

up to the second that it feels

optional and easy,

and we will believe

for an instant

that we are not monsters.

It is Father's Day weekend.

I am coming home tomorrow

and Dad is going to ask me

what I want for dinner,

because it's not every weekend

that I am coming home,

and I am going to suggest something

I know he will like, because

I like the same things.

Because steak is what we like.

Because steak is how we say, "I love you."

It is Father's Day weekend.

His gift is on the passenger seat:

a custom piece of my own design.

It was made to protect him

from the road ahead.

This is just a wrong turn;

a misadventure that we will later recall

and be glad it wasn't what it seemed.

But it is, isn't it?

What it seems to be?

I will rip our name from your skin

and burn it from your tongue;

let it disintegrate to ash in your throat;

watch you choke on the cinders.

I will scorch you to oblivion

and piss on the dying embers.

I will sever you, selflessly,

so that I can save what little you left behind.

In the wake of your betrayal,

I will do what you never could:

I will give a damn about us.

It was the labor of my love

that built this harbor of hate.

Make no further mistake, this

is exactly what it fucking seems.

She could be dead.

I could be someone else's daughter.

This could be for shits and giggles

and I am nobody's bride.

This could be anything but what it is,

and I could be anyone but who I am.

It is dark and silent now

in the subsiding storm.

I am mourning all the places

she will never be,

and the places I didn't know

she never really was.

I will evict her from my skull;

tear her teeth from my gums;

lacerate her laughter from my voice;

a suicide in segments.

I will hack my heart into quarters

and host bullets in its chambers.

As my finger twitches,

and my hand trembles,

and my arm aches and burns,

I cannot pull the trigger.

Roulette is a game for people already dead.