On The Day You Die

And the humor is always there,
but you can’t tell the suicide that.
You can’t tell the suicide’s family,
wife or husband, children, parents, but
you can laugh from a safe distance
away. You can stand in the shitty
apartment your father was found in,
can think about the heart attack that
nailed him to the floor, the lack of
history in these two tiny rooms, the
absence of yourself, your sister, your
mother, and you can flip through the
stack of mail on the wobbly table. Bills
and junk mail and nothing else, nothing
personal, not from you, not from
anyone, and you can smile. You can
laugh. It’s one way of passing
judgement.