Suicide Note

I.

Even the pastor argued passionately
that death not define my grandfather’s life
though the entire funeral service
was guided mediation on his absolution
from the hitherto cardinal sin.

My grandmother insisted on a open casket,
his toothless concave cheeks now bloated
we could say he looked peaceful
for once.
At least it was the back of his head,
my aunt whispered
stroking his thick, shocked white hair.

II.

What of my inheritance?
I don’t have my grandfather’s
high Cherokee cheekbones
or proficiency for mental calculations,
but I got his propensity toward silence
and depression, a predisposition toward
heart disease, hard work,
blood clots, breathlessness,
a green thumb, a trigger finger.

III.

Kenneth saw what he always saw
the day he lay down for his last nap.
A foggy mirror facing his bed
reflecting a patriarchal trinity:
father, dead son, holy grandson
who moved to Cincinati
and never cared about the hundreds of acres
laying fallow. And the son?
Heartbreak namesake
would’ve sucked the bad blood from his veins,
would’ve transferred the clot into his aged heart
if god had given him the choice,
that rotten bastard.

IV.

The old man buried himself every night under the duvet
only to arise, detach his oxygen tank,
and anoint his chest with Vick’s Vapor Rub,
his sacrament a habit
like rising at 5 a.m.
though he retired from dairy farming
fifteen years prior, that never suited him,
suiting himself every day in overalls and work boots
he sat in an easy chair by the picture window
loaded hunting rifle at arm’s length.

V.

To protect the grandchildren
during Fourth of July cookout
some well-meaning someone
propped the old hunting gun
by his oxygen tank
triggering the dilemma
between crawling and flight
fright or fight
in a battle more confusing to him
than D-Day‘s carnage.

VI.

And so my grandfather
wrote no note
pulling the trigger
in a poetry of silence
I wish I had the words to fill.

**

Father-Daughter Bonding

A Childress doesn’t know how to stop working.
My Dad’s Dad running cattle at age eighty-two
he was butted into a barbed wire fence
and refused to see a doctor,
preferring to bleed through bandages for three days.
No wonder after they set shoulder and stitched forearm
then sent him down to psych.

If you don’t make it, at least you can die trying,
my mantra through eighteen, twenty four, thirty six hour days.
I worked for fear of sleep,
fear of dying in it, fear of waking
in the face of everything left to do
with even more tightness in my chest and less breath
which I chalked up to the psychology of panic,
merely a moral failure,

as my Dad must’ve thought breathless on his way to work
smothering under the weight of blood
clotting capillaries and veins in his lungs,
which tried to thrive like trees without roots
starving for oxygen

I ran four miles holding chest and gasping
because what doesn’t kill makes us,
and I wanted to be stronger
than my bloody spit on the sidewalk,
an abjection accusing body of weakness
I was guilty and so crumbled
into the car and drove to the ER

where I played down the pain not wanting undue attention
called to this fallen tree
breathing shallow for the stethoscope’s command;
it was excruciating that I couldn’t do what was asked
and I understood why my Dad had hesitated to call 911
but I instead lay tangled in tubes.