All Souls

 "You should cry," my mother said
 the morning my father died.

 When they'd taken his swollen body
 and he was no longer sitting on the bed,
 groaning and coughing,
 coughing and groaning.

 When the carpet with the burn marks
 from the cigarettes he'd dropped
 (half asleep from the medication
 and the brutal labor of dying) had been replaced.

 "You should cry," she said.
 I didn't know what for.

 I'd cried for him to leave us,
 to stop drinking, yelling, to just stop.
 And that didn't change a thing,
 only the cancer did.

 I still keep his anger locked in my chest.
 On grey days, his trembling hands
 grab my shoulders from behind,
 and freeze me where I stand.
 His slurred, bitter speech appears
 in mine at the worst times.

 "You should cry," my mother said.
 For what he taught me, even in failure.
 For what kindness he held on to, until the end.