הפוך קטן ודי חוקרת וכותבת אקטיוויסטית
Into the night
I know I should have stayed with you the night before you died
I know you squeezed my hand that night though no-one said you could
I knew that you were asking me to
stay
the night
I knew it as you grasped
I knew it as I told myself it could not be
I knew it at as I kissed your blood-drained cheek and waived and lightly promised to be back
Why, why, why
did I go
out in the dark
the air was cold and taunting,
The night before you died.
* * *
The call came just as the family sat down to dinner
a pot of red soup on the stove,
luckily no longer in my hands,
else I might've dropped everything.
I'll drive you you said
We left the children crying,
car riding on a growing wave of pain
Sliding into the parking-lot, I noticed a throng of Philippinos
Entering the building, voices a gaggle.
They beat us to it, So eager to leave
their last respects
At the door
a stranger shot me
his hand. "Madam," he lurched with a smile, "I am so sorry about
your father." My blood
over
boiled.
Of course I know they only meant well!
* * *
In the master bedroom
I found my father
dead in the shape of a scream,
Whose?
I would wander
for hours and days and years on end
To whom does the scream belong:
To the Old Man, finally let go
Or
To the Foreign Male,
but a Boy, first day on the job,
now a man, possibly panicked brutal
in the face
of loss
of livelihood?
No matter,
now it is mine.