Don't know how

I still hear your quite breathing
As if I’m back in that chair
In that pale yellow room
With your cold hand resting softly in mine
As I sit by your bed and wait
Patiently for you to die

I still see your searching face
Every time I close my eyes
Your translucent skin
Stretched tight over your swollen cheeks
Dotted with dark purple spots
As I squeeze your fingers gently

It hurts me
Because I know it wasn’t me
Your wild eyes sought
I know it wasn’t me
Your hand wanted to hold

Back in that shadowed corner of my mind
The one I hide so well
I hate you for that
And for leaving me here

I don’t know how to be here without you

I love you too much
For the jarring images
That linger behind my eyes
To fade

I love you too much
The constant sound of your
Struggling breath
To leave me

I love you too much
to hate you

It feels so unnatural
To laugh and to smile
When I now how much
You loved it
And how you’ll never
Be here with me again

It feels so unnatural
To let the quite tears spill over
When I know how much
You hated it
And how you’ll never
Wipe them away again

It’s an odd kind of detachment
That settled in place of real feelings
Like I’m borrowing someone else’s pain

I’ve cried over your death too many times
While you were alive

It seems odd to me to cry now
But every so often a tear escapes

I don’t know how to do this

How to keep on going day after day

How to look all those people
In their pitying eyes
And hear the same thing
Regurgitated over and over again

How to wake up tomorrow and then
Have it slowly sink in again
As I rub my raw red eyes
That I don’t get too see you

It’s harder than it should be really
You’ve been dying for years

I guess it’s because
I’ve never know anything but you

You’ve been my mother, my father
My friend, my enemy
My reason to live and my reason to want to die
For so long
You’ve been the best grandmother
I could have ever been blessed with
And also the worst

You given me everything I have ever needed or wanted
And taken away so much of me in the process

I love you with all my heart and soul
More than life, more than death
More than whatever it is that resides between
And I hate you for leaving me alone