in loving memory of you
The hospital smell clings to my clothes,
a phantom scent of disinfectant and decay,
even months after you've turned to ash.
Your empty bed screams in the silence of our house,
the indentation of your wasted body still pressed into the mattress
like a ghost trying to hold on.
I trace the rim of your favorite teacup,
the one with the tiny chip you never let me fix,
and my fingers come away cold,
so cold,
as if death has permanently settled in the porcelain.
The pills spill from the orange bottle on your nightstand,
a colorful cemetery of failed hope,
each capsule a tombstone marking another day
you slipped further away from me.
I watched you waste,
watched cancer eat you from the inside out
like a ravenous beast I couldn't name or fight.
Your beautiful body became a roadmap of pain,
veins like rivers carrying poison instead of life.
And I stood by,
useless,
helpless,
praying to a god who wasn't listening,
while you became less and less,
until you were nothing but bone and suffering
and eyes that begged for release.
Why you and not me?
Why am I still breathing air that you can no longer taste?
Why does my heart still beat when yours has stopped?
Survival feels like a betrayal,
like I've stolen the breath that should have been yours.
The mirror shows your face superimposed over mine,
hollowed eyes and sunken cheeks,
a future I'm already living without you.
I smash the glass,
watch the pieces scatter like my sanity,
each shard reflecting a broken version of the daughter
who couldn't save you.
The worms of regret crawl through my veins,
whispering that I should have done more,
said more,
been more,
but it's too late for anything but this
this endless gnawing emptiness where love used to live.
Darkness has become my only companion,
the only thing that understands the magnitude of this loss.
I walk through our house at night,
touching your things,
inhaling the fading scent of you on your clothes,
pretending for just a moment that you're still here.
But morning always comes,
bringing with it the brutal reality
that I am alone,
that you are gone,
that the cancer didn't just take your body
but hollowed out my soul as well.
I hear you calling sometimes,
not with words but with the memory of your voice,
and I follow the sound toward the edge,
toward the place where the veil between worlds grows thin,
where I might finally join you,
finally escape this prison of survival.
The razor glints in the bathroom light,
promising reunion,
promising peace,
promising an end to this agony of being alive
when the one who gave me life is gone.
Soon, Mother,
soon I'll come find you where the pain can't reach us,
where cancer can't follow,
where we can be together again
in the silence of the grave,
the only place that feels like home anymore.
