Bury Me
by Edward J Rathke

i need to tell you how i feel about you and all the days ive spent here in this whitewashed room filled with machines that never stop filling space with a low harrowing hum while the stench of stale sterile air and disinfectant burns my nostrils and then theres these goddamn lights that hurt my eyes with their paleglow and all these fucking people that wont stop touching and poking me and asking if i feel okay whichll makes me carve cancer in their forehead before im gone but none of thats why i want you here to hear what im about to say about you and how youve abandoned me in this medical mausoleum where these doctors feed on me with icy hands while you just stand there from the deck while sharks devour me until my bowels float about the water in sight for these vultures thatll spread my failing organs across a table for surgeons and students to poke and prod far away from my poor wife buried and forgotten without me while this savage son who comes waiting for me to rot in here so you can collect and ravage the money im leaving which i know is why youve finally decided to show your face only to hear the rotten smell of my cancerous breath fall short with the collapse of my lungs whichll finally turn my eyes colorless and shallow so you can take your money because it never mattered to me and i know you and your sisters will rip each other apart for it because youre soulless and cruel and i knew you all would be because youre all the seed of my loins but i didnt know the wickedness i sowed into you would run so deep that itd turn your heart to fragmented ice formed by my unknowing hands that nurtured you with blight that tore you apart until you became the vicious animal here who blames me for your mother and your brothers suicide because im the miserable cunt you blame for everything thats gone wrong but what you need to know is that your mother never stopped loving me but she loved you most of all even more than me and she wanted so much for you to be perfect but i never loved her the way she deserved or the way i wanted to love her which is the second greatest mistake of my life that ive not stopped regretting and dont let anyone ever tell you that its too late to regret or that you shouldnt regret because regret is all that keeps us petulant demons alive for so long as it burns inside you boring away in the back of your skull until it becomes tangible as a tumor that grows causing every thing around you to deteriorate and decompose along with your body which all started back when i married a mountain of regret that day your mother started wearing black eyes and i fell in love with death and started to kill myself and her and all of you over and over again but im sorry you had to be there for all of those mornings your mom spent crying over her suicidal orpheus that couldnt bring her back through hellfire but instead played songs that pitched her deeper and deeper until she became a memory of tragedy that you held onto tight with both hands fueling all those days you spent plotting my death that shown in your sharkeyes that fumed at me furious from your tiny head and i hate myself for doing that to you because i remember it all from the very first breath you took to the day you showed me your hate but never said it aloud while you stalked the house after your brother hung himself with your fists turning white at your sides and your teeth grinding away but i knew where you were all those nights you spent in his room crying through photographs because you couldnt sleep from the fury that filled you or the deaths you couldnt sing back which turned my anger towards you with raining blows because i couldnt raise you back from the eternal wake i prepared for you those years i spent killing your mom and brother until they wrapped their necks in deathties waving goodbye to all of us so i buried you with them but i still remember the first time you swung a baseball bat with your hat flopped atop your dirty blonde hair with that wonderful way you smiled at me then which still cuts me in half because ive never forgotten how beautiful you looked there as a miniature me with a bright glow all about you because you were happy which broke my heart then just knowing that you wouldnt always stay that way with me as a person you loved and admired and that image of you wont stop haunting my hollow heart which is my greatest regret even more than your mother who you found a foot off the ground her face turned colorless dangling from the ceiling but i mean that what ive done to you is the greatest mistake of my life because i made you full of promise and i never wanted it to come to this though i sometimes think that the rest of the goodness left in my rotten heart was put into you that first moment i held you watching how wondrous life would be for you but i see now that all that promise and hope in you was everything i meant to demolish with my venomous words and brutal hands making you the most important and destructive act of my eighty years which finally caught up with me as this tumor that i made by killing and breaking and stomping your gentleness apart turning you into a hateful angry man with a permanent scowl on your face to match mine and im sure you dont even remember how you used to smile and laugh all the time as a cheerful shining child with so much potential that i flayed into squalor and spite that would break your mothers heart if she still had one but what i really wanted to tell you today isnt that ive ruined my life or all of yours or that i dont deserve to be left in solitude with my disease or that i hate or resent you kids for the way youve leered at me these last twenty five years but what i wanted to tell you is that i love you most of all and hate myself for what ive done to you with my hands and words and spite and though i loved your brother and your sisters it was always you most of all that i knew was perfect in every way holding all my hopes and dreams upon your shaky shoulders when you were just that little kid who used to sit on my lap reading fairy tales to me because you wanted me to be proud of you which was the last time i remember smiling and i want you to know i was and still am proud of you even now though you came here just to watch me die i want you to know that i love you and dont want you to forgive me because i deserve nothing and never deserved your youthful smiles or laughter that filled my house before i ate you alive when you were just a boy unable even then to realize the pain i was inflicting on your life which plummeted because of the terrible things i did to your mother and your brother and you which is why you cant forgive me because ive earned this death full of hate and spite and will burn in hell for all that ive done and for all the things i never did or told you like how i love your smile or how i never wanted to pour hate on you so hard that it sunk through your skin and blossomed a hateful heart but im failing here now and i want to look at you in the eyes one last time so please come closer to me with all your hate seething through that unforgiving face because id like to get one last look at all of my regret returning all the hate i gave from the boy who was all my hope and love in this miserable fucked up world whos now a reflection of all my dreadful demonic deeds where i can finally see and know that i need to die alone and die without forgiveness and rot and wither alone with my regret