“Something‘s missing. Something‘s wrong.

I used to know where I belong,

but now each day feels like a fight.

Nothing in my life feels right.

My mom tap-dances on my nerves.

My father has this way with words

that makes me feel like I’m a child.

My credit bill is running wild...

And then there’s the environment...

Let’s not start on the President!

My friends are all so self-obsessed,

and my chihuahua is possessed!

My Facebook posts are massive fails,

I’m terrified of vapor trails...

Oh, I just want the world to stop!”

“... Ma’am, this is a coffee shop.”

#therapy #coffee #chihuahua #whatisthepointofthese #challengeoftheweek

My dad didn’t die. He was supposed to. I flew across half of our madly spinning space-rock to be with him, and he didn’t die. I packed up my notebooks of equations and cancelled my meetings in the dim offices of old men healthier than him to be by his side. But he didn’t follow through. Not the first time he hasn’t followed through. Not the first time I’ve dropped everything for him. It’s always his heart that doesn’t work right; that’s what puts him into the hospital, and what makes him stay out of my life.

My dad didn’t die. And so I have no idea what it is to grieve a father’s death. I have grieved his addiction, I have grieved his absence, but I have not grieved his passing. I got off the plane, jetlagged and a thousand euros poorer from the last-minute trip. I felt numb, trying to explain to the man at immigration why I was in Detroit. I didn’t know yet that my dad’s heart had started to work again while I was in the air. I didn’t know the music hadn’t died.

See, that’s the thing about him. My dad. His heart doesn’t work, but my god does that man make love to symphonies, embrace the curves of his violin, whisper sweet nothings to the classical masters. For every ounce of love that he withholds from me, he puts a magnum of wild, rushing adoration into that instrument. It overflows, it engulfs me, it overwhelms me, ever since my earliest days. With that adoration he gave our family life, provided us shelter, brought adventures to us. With that adoration he gave me the gift of passion and rhythm and the endless quest for the contradiction that is perfection in art. See, his heart doesn’t work, but his music – oh, his music – it works like the sun shines and the waves crash. The world can’t go on without it.

Up high in the clouds, disconnected from the truth, I grieved. I thought my dad’s heart stopped working once and for all; I thought he had died. And I didn’t grieve it. But in that same moment, when I thought the music had died, see, I grieved its passing.

So I do not know what it is to grieve a father’s death. I landed, and I learned that his heart – which the doctors say is bigger than normal, to all of our shock – had started to work again. I did not need to grieve that. But for one day, one transoceanic flight, I thought the music had died. And I know what it is to feel that loss.

It is selfish to wonder
who will bake the English muffins
once my grandmother dies.
It is less selfish to worry about
who will upkeep the birdhouse.

In her will, one uncle inherits
the t-bird, the other the money.
My father earns the property.

Because he will be busy with grief,
my father will not clean the birdhouse.
The insides will dirty. 
The birdbath will dry. 
No one will remember the cardinals
that sleep there at night,

how they must wash themselves daily

but have no clean water,

how they must hunger for virtue.

And I could change this.
I could paint the birdhouse 
back to white and patch the roof
back to better. But instead
I let it weather because

when I think about fixing things
I remember cutting snowflakes
out of paper and how I tear them
with my graceless hands.

You can turn over any item 
in my grandmother’s home
and find a grandkid’s name on it.
The silver spoons. The straw dolls.
Her favorite blouse. The welcome mat

on the doorstep. Everything
except the birdhouse.

I’m all recycled phrases, bullshit metaphors. Don’t read me. I’m rotting meat. Maggots in pits. I’m blood crusted under the surface of bruised skin. I’m broken teeth, cavities. I’m the fucking soup du jour. But not today’s. Last week’s. Slop no one fucking ate. That paper sheet on the chair at the dentist. Used. Never changed. I’m the fever-sweat skin flakes you left in bed. Vomit in the toilet. Bandages, bloodied. That bowl you left in your bedroom. Covered in fucking black mold. Fucking black mold in general. Those giant sloughs of rubber tires that litter the freeway. Road gators. Fucking whatever. Spoiled milk. Disposable socks at the shoe store. Those plastic sleeves that magazines come in. Fucking useless. Empty coffee cups. Kitchen-drawer, dead batteries. Broken lightbulbs. Morning eye scum. I’m that last sip at the bottom of the glass. No one wants to fucking drink me. I’m last year’s almanac. Last year’s newspapers. Last year’s trends. Last year’s date. Last year’s...what the fuck was I talking about again?

I am ruin.