The Good Son
having fallen through the cracks of the dwindling economy
making his way backward to his
home town,
as the result of many choices gone awry
he lives with his parents---
now aged, broke & single,
he works a job that has nothing to do with anything that he went to school for,
a wonderful product of a world since reagan &
his father with prostate cancer
now so tired that he sleeps most of the day
gets the shots in his stomach
because he doesn’t want to do chemo
while mother who survived a quintuple bypass
deals with her full blown diabetes &
newly found fibrosis of the lungs,
making trips to the doctor offices
2 or 3 times a week
while wearing a mask at night to help her breathe---
as all the horror stories of this place he grew up
flood into his mind the minute he awakes,
it can all get a bit overwhelming &
he balances the depression with the fact that
mother & father are neck to neck in the race for the
finish line &
the whole time he hears them coughing all night,
beginning to really suffer,
he wonders what will happen when one dies &
the other is left without this person with whom they spent
so many years together with---
he dreads how he will afford to help the survivor,
he dreads how he will continue to work & assist his remaining parent
without having a moment to himself any more &
he dreads doing it all in this town that holds absolutely no interest for him
anymore---
as he saves what money he can
he dreams of getting away
of moving to another place &
trying to start again,
as if he was living in a movie,
as if he was doing anything but waiting for his own credits to roll,
but it all is a bit more bleak than that---
he gets flowers for his mother on nothing days &
pickles, chicken wings & whatever else his dad might want
when he goes grocery shopping &
he hugs them a lot but not too much
because he doesn’t want to annoy them either---
with the future comes horror
with the future comes stress
with the future comes responsibility
and it will all stay that way until he puts a gun in his own mouth.
Copyright © Andrew Delapruch | Year Posted 2012
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