The Memory To Clean Out My Father’s Furnished Room

the memory of going to clean out my father’s furnished
room with lorraine is not a pleasant memory. rather, it is
filled with the sadness of remembering how poor my father
was, how alone, how hard he worked only to have his disabled
widow denied his pension because he had lied about his age
to get a job at otis elevator and worked there 25 years, even
as he pissed blood and was dying of prostate cancer.
no, nothing sweet about that memory, rummaging thru
soggy things in a a huge barrel his landlord had already
begun to discard his life into.
but, yes, you would have loved my father because he
was worth loving, he was a rare and beautiful man, sad,
heroic, noble, a misfit for america, a romantic, a baseball
player good enough to warrant a tryout with the yankees.
as for my mother she was sad beauty, also, filled with fire,
gentle, sociable, bride to a man who didn’t have a practical
bone in his body. she was trapped in this life like a beautiful
butterfly trapped in a glass jar by a very mean god.