By Joe Manus
I was outside-of-myself sullen.
Soaked in beads of adrenaline.
I slammed my bedroom door.
It was an unnecessary act, as the jamb trim had been severed from a hundred slams before. It just over-swung itself, shoving its knob, unapologetically, into the awaiting Sheetrock hole.
I wanted that hinged feebleness to keep my anger in as much as keep it out. A young boy watching an old man die is to watch his own death from outside of himself.
A captive audience to the end of everything he hasn’t yet had the chance to become.
It angered me because I could not control it. His death was happening despite me. I was angry for him leaving and angrier at my uncontrollable selfishness. I walked back into his room and wiped the vomit from his chin and chest. He was so swollen. A bombastic bloat that left his antique skin wrinkle-free. The swell expanded his once small bed sores into cavernous meaty hollows.
I fumbled to find some document he wanted read to him. Something medical and overly official sounding. I turned on his well-worn Gene Krupa eight-track. When he was a young man, he played drums in a Chicago speakeasy. At that moment, he wanted the echo of his youth to drown out the silence of his emptiness. The soft thrash of the snare brush melody united with his aspirated gurgling. I gently closed his bedroom door until it faintly latched.
I let go of the knob, and without noticing, of him