the last time I saw my father alive

he smiled and huffed
in that way of his
when he was trying to express tolerance
or simply amused recognition.

he’d awakened to find me sat
at the end of his hospital bed
reading a book
and called me to sit closer by,

so I moved to the head of his bed
and then with tubes in his nose
and nothing on below the sheets
he drifted back to sleep.

we’d spoken before about his guilt
that he hadn’t been a good father
and I’d said in mitigation that
mum hadn’t been a good mother.

he laughed at that,
said “understatement of the year”.

I’d held his hand
and listened to him cry
and say he didn’t know why gays come out
when it’s so obvious,

and suddenly it hit me that
I’d long since ceased to make him want
to feel ashamed for hurting me.

if this was TV that would have been
the last time I saw him alive,

but lives don’t end with narrative finesse,
and so it was a week later
that once he’d dropped to sleep
I closed my book and left.