Wrongful Life Claim Against My Father
They filed his blood beneath a numbered case—
the marrow went to war without a call.
The VA counted cells, not what took place
in basements where his stare could split the wall.
The cancer knew his secrets—mutiny
against Guam’s humid silence, its red debt
claimed as the twenty-one guns thoomed in key.
We stood. We nodded. No one cried. Not yet.
There’s money now, for toxin’s wrongful death,
Agent Orange crusading through his bones.
But not for years of learning that a breath
is held—not for the legacy of tones.
They pay for what his blood became, not how
it taught us all to disappear. Lie down.
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