My mother tells him he can’t go yet.
Remember what Pop always said,
“It’s written in the book.”
My father repeats,
It’s written in the book.
My mother beams,
You remember!
And he snaps back,
How could I forget?
his wild eyebrows raised.
And that’s all we’ll get of him today.
Just a taste before he sinks back
into gibberish. At full strength,
he’d fulminate against faith.
But the axiom: no atheists in a foxhole
turns out to be true inside this
blackhole of a disease, erasing
the man my father used to be.
Heaven, he says, cracking open
a broken-tooth smile.
And that’s how I know
he’s already gone.
