Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark

Your uncle is dead, my father says late at night in my room. Is dead, and then as if he just heard the news himself, crumbles like potato chips and starts weeping, my brave father crys. I’ve seen my father cry before but nothing like this, I didn’t know what to do.

I know we will have an hour long dreadful ride, all my siblings came along with the cousins, they will have a black and white photo next to his casket with a label of “ The Celebration of Life”, and in the next room cookies that tasted like plastic frisbee and coffee that tastes like smoke because that’s how we send the dead away.

Because i'm the youngest in my family i'm the last to be informed about his death. Knowing something's wrong by the way my father was home it took two excruciatingly long days for anyone to tell me.

My father with his thick hands, scruffy hair. And the odor of alcohol was gone during the week, but now sitting on my bed on a Wednesday night.

And if my father died I wouldn’t know whether to be afraid or sad. I’d spend long nights questioning what I had done wrong. 

This poem is about: 
My family
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