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Only Me (Free verse) by heartlessempath

The bones of my father are not Dried whistle clean or bleached white, or Buried in the local cemetery, As they should be. Oh, no, no… no. They are still in his body and He and his corpse are still walking, Stumbling around in my neighborhood. In my house. But the corpse of my father, The man my mother knew, loved and married; The man who died (who should have lived) Is in. in my house, my life. The zombie father. The body of my father is not decaying, no. No, sir, his name is not among the fallen, Or emblazoned on a monument. He is not quite dead, He is not dead enough to please. No, no monument for the lost, The nearly dead, the animated, the suspended beings. No, there was no moment of silence For my father. Only a story, only a medal, Only me. A moment of listening, please.

heartlessempath 16-Jan-05/10:22 PM
Actually, I wrote this in response to a book- In Country, by Bobbie Ann Mason. The book explores a young girl trying to find out who her father was, because he died in the Vietnam War before she was born. I started wondering what it was like for the men who came back, who didn't die, who had children and tried to cobble together some semblance of a life afterwards...

And "Only Me" because I am the only testament to his existence. His name isn't on a monument, he isn't "important" enough; all he has is a child who's forced to deal with the after effects of a war.




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