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Dear Grandpa

Cami Rumble

I don’t know how to feel about your death
Though it hasn’t happened yet.
The cancer lingers on,
Sapping your bones of strength
The way your acrid tongue
Saps joy and kindness from the room.

Guilt and anger swirl inseparable
For the man who has demeaned
my every struggle,
Who acted as my mechanic for a pittance,
Who called me an old maid at the
Wrinkled age of twenty-seven.

Your death advances, even to you,
The man who held life in such scorn
Now clinging to its lapels,
You, who noted the smell of my baby’s hair
As the mark of a good mother,
Reducing my maternal worth to a bath.

I search my soul for empathy
But all I can find is rough indifference,
Heartlessness to meet heartlessness.
I wonder, guilty, if that makes us alike,
And if your regrets (should you ever have any)
Will one day be my own.

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