Inheritance

I never prayed for him to die --

not in the way you'd think.

It wasn't a candle-snuff wish,

just a hunger for silence.

Not even peace.

Just absence.

I do not weep for him.

Do you hear me?

I do Not weep for him.

Let the saints choke on their psalms,

let the neighbors whisper behind their curtains of pity -

I spit at their piety.

Every dawn is a stake in the chest.

Every cough from the next room

is a noose tightening

on the throat of my soul.

He will not die.

He just Lingers.

An old king upon a rotting throne,

And I?

I am the jester who cleans his shit

and laughs with bleeding gums.

You would call me cruel,

you who sleep through the night.

You who travel -

Who live -

Who do not suffocate beneath a man

who once held the world in his palm

and now drips it,

drop by drop,

into my mouth like poison.

My mother fled this tomb.

Yes - fled!

Don't call it death.

She escaped.

Her final act of rebellion

was to vanish.

She left me behind -

the dutiful one,

the strong one,

the fucking good child.

I was not born for this prison.

I was meant for movement.

For great halls and foreign suns.

For ink-stained hands,

and wild gods in foreign tongues.

But instead -

I am here.

Still

Sometimes I dream the walls collapse.

Sometimes I dream his breath stops.

(Yes - I said it!)

And in the silence that follows,

I feel something unholy rise in me -

Not grief.

No.

Glory.

A hallelujah with blood in its teeth.

And then - I am sick with it.

Sick with the wanting.

Sick with the win.

Sick with the gall it takes to say:

I want him gone.

Not for hate.

Not for vengeance.

But because I am drowning.

He clings to me like mildew,

like guilt soaked in bone,

he does not look at me,

only through me -

as if I were already a ghost

haunting his long decline.

So let the stars judge me.

Let God avert his eyes

I would trade ten more years of this martyrdom

for one single, soaring breath

unburdened by his weight.

He is not dead.

But I am dying

and no one sings

for the ones

who rot while keeping others alive.