UnFathered Christmas

Falter Father, ever fatter ever older
Sicker unfiltered stop raising your voice
Bitter for decades like it wasn’t your choice
Bicker and fight but no punches thrown
She was not yours to own
My sight to see millions of sighs to gleam
60 years of rib jabs
All better with a Kit Kat

Winters were quieter as the dark took more night. The produce paled to summer’s, shabby leaves and tiny beets. Less sun and less sugar, photo synthesizing happy memories posing in front of the tree. We put it up and decorated it ornate and bright, light shining to the street you no longer cared to stroll.

You woke up early, talked my ear off about raw ginger and biting lemons, but that didn’t slow down the cancer. Stage 4 when we all found out, months left with another Christmas around the corner. I didn’t know how to feel, soaking in your wisdom that channeled your trade through my hands. Our wooden cabinets, painted baby blue and bubble gum pink since I said I didn’t care. My sister decided while I only said blue, you were an artist in your time but I was not a fan.

It was sitting watching your wife work, needing a Turkish coffee alongside your Turkish music. She just wanted the quiet of her hymns, hummed to the beat of her heart. Alive was she as me in us we worked and slaved without a thanks. Our food was delicious, a feast every evening. Celebrating the victories of your lives as they waned and the tea kettle screamed. Facilitating the facade of a family we sat in silence and ate. Day in and out the same stomping shook the ground. The yelling at this that and the other, all beneath you. A woman or a child or a dog, whomever your eyes turned to. I ducked and I hid and I tried to tend our wounds but the barrage did not stop.

A part of me at peace as you lay dying, but the grief would not settle until I could love you no longer. I left one day, you waved from the porch. Covered in tubes unable to move; I could not bear it. If I loved you more perhaps I could care, help with the sitting and the standing, the breathing and the panting. Though you were righteously independent, it was your grave, leaving you without grace for the way you found out. Out of past lives now passive and grey, leaving your loved ones chastised for not preaching your name. Love was a foreign language to you but I appreciated your effort, you learned 5 others yet never got better.

You must have been in your eighties, or about to be soon. Your birthday and Christmas shared under the same moon. Festive lights we gathered around a table, “Happy Birthday papik” we sang, and you smiled. An m&m ice cream cake, candles and song. Picture us beneath the poem, nothing was wrong. For a minute it was real, all together minus some. I’m not complaining, awaiting further truth to come. Line stockings with lies, a while it kept the peace, though with only happiness fleeting did you leave me.