happy dead dad day to all who celebrate 🎉

i was saturday years old when i learned elton john wrote the catchiest song ever

& also it was about suicide & also

spotify decided the day of my dead dad’s memorial was the perfect day to suicide bait me

with a daylist titled serotonin weirdcore saturday morning

because i listened to horror & vampire they gave me some weirdcore chaotic &

elton john crooned about killing himself on TV for attention & i went girl, me too.

my bestie had to tell me not to bring a knife to the church

& though i could’ve used the xanax i keep stashed in the hollow handle,

like a dutiful dog i bowed my head & took the beating & left

the knife & when my cousin chucky, who i had not seen since i was young

enough to remember going to my father’s mother’s house

for holidays, brought in his small children i went ohhhh the babiessssss

& then focused on connecting my mother’s phone to her church’s bluetooth

which proved nearly impossible except that she turned her bluetooth off

& back on & then it was easy as spending money, i mean

it was so natural i couldn’t help but feel ashamed,

& then the playlist i spent hours ordering just right despite the different genres &

bad songs & opposing input from offending sides went

automatically onto shuffle & i wished, not for the first time, that i had listened to my other bestie

when he agreed that spotify was telling me to add i think i’m going to kill myself

to the dead dad 11/11 memorial music playlist as a haha jokeyjoke

but it was too late, the playlist was in my mother’s hands & the volume was too low

for anyone to hear or laugh or ask the wrong name what the fuck is wrong with you so instead

i thanked my mother’s boss who inexplicably came for something her other boss did

& he gracefully said you’re welcome & sometime later, not long but so long

the seconds felt like pulling nails, my cousin chucky’s babies (you remember i started this story earlier?)

were so loud i was wondering who the fuck brings babies to a memorial, there’s no dead body

to scar them but there’s a jar of a burnt body on the altar & no need for them to be here

screaming & then his wife who hadn’t been his wife long enough to come to the holiday dinners

stood in front of me & my brother & said, perfectly polite, excuse me & moved through us

to the woman my father married & divorced twice

to say when i heard, you were the first person i thought of & i thought why isn’t elton john singing

about killing himself & i thought why didn’t i bring my knife & i thought

who the fuck does she think i am & i thought who the fuck does she think she is & i thought

i could burn this whole place down & no one could stop me until one set of ashes was indistinguishable

from another & i thought i need to get out of here i’m too fucking psycho for this

& i told my mother i need to leave now & she said it’s time?

& i didn’t say anything i was burning wet & the doors were too far

& the children were in the room with the one-sided window

& so i stood in the bathroom where i could hear nothing

but was convinced they could hear me saying i want to die i want them to die

i want the church to burn i want to bash my head in i want to leave

& i stood there so long the power went out & i was convinced someone was there

to murder me but no one was there to murder me & i went back in

& my great aunt lied & i cried silently on my mother’s shoulder &

i whispered & i whispered & i whispered & i left