Drawing to a Close | OctPoWriMo Day 29

Your death took a long time

Too long, all things being relative.

Dying seems so Zen in the movies

But all that was ever borne

From your cracked lips was agony.

I’ve no idea where you went

When the moment finally came

Or even what you believed in

(if you’d ever considered such things).

–

I wasn’t even there when it happened

But I know it wasn’t beautiful

A man’s suffering never is and a man’s tears

Are always heart-breaking for they are never

Spilled carelessly but come from a well

So deep as to be seldom retrievable.

It was my mother who decided,

Who stole the umbilicus from

Your surrendering frame.

–

There’s no shame in asking to die

For you were so riddled with disease,

With sufferings inconceivable in nature.

Our hospitals are filled with corpses,

Empty folds of flesh and bones

Like barbed-wire fences, wrapped

Ferociously around an invisible tenet.

It ought to be considered murder

To stitch the soul into an empty sack

And leave it trapped there

Beyond any justifiable definition of mercy.

*

This was written about a step uncle who died of multiple types of cancer. My mom took care of him in her home until he needed to go into hospital. She told me the pain never stopped, he just screamed and screamed.

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