His last cigarette.
A final drag. Aged fifty-two. 
A mug of tea and a smoke,
 
his last indulgence. 
He was already laid out cold.
This version of him. 
 
My Dad 
Resembling a toy 
with missing batteries.
 A man suspended.
Drained of youth 
and robbed of wintering

I was desperate 
to remember the blue 
of his aging tattoos, 
 
and patterns of wrinkles 
creasing his eyes 
when he grinned. 
 
I reimagined
his animated 
frame. 
 
He was lively when he laughed,
he laughed so hard that tears fell in sync
with his jiggling belly
 
I touched his face in 
my final farewell.  
His details were already disappearing.
 
Shocked and disturbed 
as I felt the stitches,
his desecration zippered his neck.
 
This giant of a man 
had been butchered by strangers
on a sterile slab.
 
Cut up, weighed and drained.
All his secrets, exposed.
I couldn’t hold onto the smile lines anymore,
 
nor to his inked skin,
blue swallows fading like clouds
of cigarette smoke in the breeze.
 
Knowing that 
my Dad 
was reduced to a cadaver.
 
That memory 
won’t fade.
Those stark stitches still haunt me.