Lighter in trembling hand lifted to Marlboro caught in twitching lips. Anticipation and flame mirrored by Haldol-glazed eyes with nervous glances at Nurse, back-turned, who spins suddenly to scold.
“Sorry, didn't know the rules.”
But he does, in his hospital gown, smokes away on his fourth in fifteen minutes. Head-jerks left and right as Bellevue ward-peers watch with nicotine hunger.
I flick the Bic back in my pocket. Promise to never pass it again.
“See you tomorrow, Dad.”
Tomorrow….
I didn’t ask to lift the sheet or slide out the ball-bearing bin that held Dad’s body in the grey of the M.E.’s basement.
“They only do that in movies,” says man in yellow scrubs. Hands me a Polaroid instead.
Swollen and pale but still Dad, sort of, even with my eyes half a-squint.
And now, years later, I wish I had asked to lift the sheet.
Giancarlo Malchiodi returned home from fifth grade one day and proclaimed to his mother “I want to be a teacher!” Spending thirty years happily sparking the creativity of many young minds as a high school teacher of English, he is now re-igniting his own. A graduate of the MFA program at Brooklyn College/CUNY where he studied with Allen Ginsberg, Giancarlo’s poetry has been featured in A Gathering of The Tribes, Oberon Poetry Magazine, The Paterson Literary Review, Streetlight, and The Nimrod International Journal. His essays and photographs have likewise been featured in Teachers & Writers, Panorama, and The Emerson Review. When not travelling, reading/writing, absorbing news and pop culture, or scanning the skies for Superman, Giancarlo wanders to rediscover NYC or explores 125+ feet undersea as a DiveMaster.