I love you

He said 

He spat it 

With orange juice 

Into his oxygen mask

To Grandma 

And it was the best I love you id ever heard in my life 

The most clear 

—we haven’t understood him all day 

Today it was hard to mince garlic

Or cut a lemon without crying 

I have found that the three hardest things to care for are 

Bitterness, jealousy and anger 

When we tend to them, they flourish 

growing like bright anemones across your cheeks

They are as easy to read and feed as hives, 

the condition will only worsen. 

It is starvation only that can save you, 

A refusal to participate. 

I watch my Father grieve,

Grieve as he pours hot water

stirs his tea, takes up the bag of chips

Buttons his red shirt over his beer belly. 

He explains, it has been a very hard day. Monday also, was hard. The hope is waining. White blood cells climbing. 

It is something that has not occurred to me before, that he will weep too. He is 

father, strong, able, not filled with emotion like I am—or so I thought. 

I half expected this would not be hard. 

But he attaches everyday to his Father. Like I would. Like I will. Wasting every minute sapping up all the minutes he can. 

I watch him wrestling, tightly inside, wound like a wire 

As we sit, all of our faces turned toward him like lilys, open around the table 

We learn to love our father more as we watch him lose his. 

I get anxiety every time 

Because we are so different and I want to change you

I beg God to muzzle me 

I want to shake the anger out of you

The fear that took up the full moon shape of your mouth

Whatever is making your eyes red with sorrow

But I love you, that is why  I do not want you to be so trapped deeply inside yourself

Instead I feel strain, and the insides of me bursting

I want to throw a freaking temper tantrum and be all the emotions you hold back 

and I cry almost every time that I leave because you are so afraid to be all that you are all that you were made to be for fear of it being 

bad or wrong or imperfect

And these, my friend my dear brother is the exact thing we are

I want you to be that violently

She felt paralyzed, I could hear it in her voice 

she 

stumbled over her text, asking if she could call 

Shaking 

Wavering 

I could hear her 

Tightrope vocal chords

Over the line 

I did not tell her I felt the exact same way. 

That I had been crying most of the day. 

That I, too, could barely leave the couch. 

I gave her advice that I knew I should take. 

Gave her courage that I barely believed myself.