NaPoWriMo Day 14 Poem 11 Status

when you find out your dad had a heart attack,

you wonder if you should update your facebook.

You wonder if one parent less should be your status.

Do you expect people to like your status?

who’s attention do you actually want?            

Maybe you should change your profile picture,

put up the one of you in your dads arms as a baby, wrapped in white cotton

while your dad, younger, happier, smiles into your black newborn eyes.

People will like that. 

It will make your relationship look like the kind you wanted,

like he always knew how to hold you.

Like how he held your handle bars on the bike you wanted that he bought 

and you wobbled through London Fields and he said peddle faster as he ran, 

ran beside you, and you screamed don’t let go, don’t let go 

and he said you’ll be fine and you wanted to believe him and then he let go and you rode, rode 

and he threw his arms in the air and bellowed that’s my boy, that’s my boy!   

But that isn’t true, that’s not what happened.

Somewhere in your mind it’s what was meant to have happened.

But why would that matter to anyone else?