This is how I’d kill my father:
Take him out for yogurt
at the mall near the dementia place,
order him a chocolate cone,
slide pills into the swirls.
He’d want to share, too big for one,
but I’d just say, eat what you can,
then watch him take another bite,
the way he puts one foot before the other
without knowing where he’s going.
Is this my life now? he asks sadly
when we drop him in the room
with the chair he doesn’t sit in
and TV he doesn’t watch.
He doesn’t understand
how his clothes got in the closet
or why the rest of us can leave
when they take him down to dinner.
He‘s mad that the attendants make him
brush his teeth and change his pants,
and he can’t shave inside the dining room at lunch.
Of course you can’t, my mother says.
She talks to him like he’s still real.
I was hoping for a blood clot
when they called to say he fell,
a bubble to his brain to take him out,
but he was fine.
His legs weep fluid, drenching pants and socks,
the fleece-lined scuffs he slides around in —
grizzled phantom in a terry robe.
Eat your yogurt, I would tell him
if I didn’t lose my nerve,
resigned to soldier on like he is,
one foot past the other,
till the white flag’s hoisted
and it’s safe to carry off our dead.
