David Erlewine - The Suicide Note My Dad Forgot to Leave Me

David Erlewine

The Suicide Note My Dad Forgot to Leave Me

Stuttering sucks, as you know

You need to be the man of the apartment, whatever that means

At least say something nice to the front desk because we’re two months late on rent and you'll soon be homeless

If mom brings Alan, don’t let him lay one stubby finger on my casket

Go visit Tommy in jail and tell him Pop finally delivered

Don’t reproduce; things were okay with your mom until she convinced me that stutterers also deserve kids

Sorry about that Red Sox-Orioles game where you could have caught that foul if I hadn’t borrowed your glove

And those two broken fingers you got while I showed off the ball on the Jumbo tron

Sorry for landing near the front door so you have to walk through my blood stains every time you leave the building, at least until the bastards fix the back exit

Stay on that idiot Ernie to really clean me up (do this one last fucking thing for me)

David Erlewine is a fiction editor at Dogzplot. His stories appear in The Pedestal Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, Word Riot, elimae, and a number of other literary journals.