DEATH Poem: I AM BECOME, by Lord Vaughn

She spoke the fatal words and the world disintegrated around us. Burnt orange cushions and eggshell walls

atomized, as light

grew stark and haunted. It wasn’t until after the fallout that I realized she’d spoken from my perspective. Not her husband, not her rock, but my own father:

Dad is dead.

Tears fell, as I’m sure they had during her 2AM drive to the hospital. Silent but for rubber on asphalt and

an ionizing sky—

though her eyes were dry when she got home. All evidence of loss erased; a paramedic ferrying a body deep into the cold night. The

presence of mind

that would save a measure of her grief to share. She’d sat me down on the couch, but it seemed time too could fall prey to

a stuttering heartbeat,

because I was then in front of the bathroom, driving my fist toward the door. As if I could break through that boundary and pull back something

lost to entropy,

but she told me, Stop. We can’t afford this place anymore. So I stopped and settled my breath, even from the

edge of precarity.

Twin performers upon the high-wire: we’d either fall or we wouldn’t, but Death would not rob us of

our composure too.

So I walked back to the living-room—back to my mother and held her tight. And I didn’t shed a tear for

a generation’s half-life.