The Genetic Urge
Lance T. Young
Death runs in my family.
So it seems.
None of my relatives have proven to be immortal so far.
My grandparents are dead.
My mother, got bored one fall day in North Carolina,
(where my father was stationed during the war)
got depressed watching autumn merge into winter,
kept eating sleeping pills.
My sister's child killed her
in childbirth
so hesitant to enter this world that he (or she, I don't know which)
committed suicide, wrapped the umbilical cord around his neck.
Took her with him as punishment for trying to birth him.
There is something about living
that scares them I think.
So it's my father and myself now
and I've seen him, while shaving,
look at himself in the mirror
whisper things to himself hesitate
as the razor glides over his adam's apple.
He'd like to do it.
I can tell.
But there is responsibility, and an image he keeps of what a good father should be (a good daddy should not kill himself....),
so he stifles the death urge.
And it sits latent. Like some sort of thanatotic time bomb.
Waiting.
Waiting for a day when I am older and will not miss him.
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