the good son

having fallen through the cracks of the dwindling economy

making his way backward to his

home town,

as the result of many choices gone awry

he lives with his parents---

now aged, broke & single,

he works a job that has nothing to do with anything that he went to school for,

a wonderful product of a world since reagan &

his father with prostate cancer

now so tired that he sleeps most of the day

gets the shots in his stomach

because he doesn’t want to do chemo

while mother who survived a quintuple bypass

deals with her full blown diabetes &

newly found fibrosis of the lungs,

making trips to the doctor offices

2 or 3 times a week

while wearing a mask at night to help her breathe---

as all the horror stories of this place he grew up

flood into his mind the minute he awakes,

it can all get a bit overwhelming &

he balances the depression with the fact that

mother & father are neck to neck in the race for the

finish line &

the whole time he hears them coughing all night,

beginning to really suffer,

he wonders what will happen when one dies &

the other is left without this person with whom they spent

so many years together with---

he dreads how he will afford to help the survivor,

he dreads how he will continue to work & assist his remaining parent

without having a moment to himself any more &

he dreads doing it all in this town that holds absolutely no interest for him

anymore---

as he saves what money he can

he dreams of getting away

of moving to another place &

trying to start again,

as if he was living in a movie,

as if he was doing anything but waiting for his own credits to roll,

but it all is a bit more bleak than that---

he gets flowers for his mother on nothing days &

pickles, chicken wings & whatever else his dad might want

when he goes grocery shopping &

he hugs them a lot but not too much

because he doesn’t want to annoy them either---

with the future comes horror

with the future comes stress

with the future comes responsibility

and it will all stay that way until he puts a gun in his own mouth.