The Most Hollow, Tumored Sound

By Michael Ladanyi

As I sit here in this blue, overstuffed,
comfortable chair, farming these
seedling words, I am standing within
a melancholy, August conversation,
on the day of my father's death.

Hall doors opened and closed
quietly, as family moved about like
headstones adjusting themselves in
midnight graveyards after the dusty
day of a death. My blood felt

ancient, our why's the silent cry of
stillborn children lying naked in
bright-white, fluorescent, sterile
light. My mother wailed bitterly as
my father died, a million sins faded

with the sinking of his chest; I know,
my hand was there to listen. The
oxygen machine continued to
whisper, now alone, no one
dependent upon it. That was the most

hollow, tumored sound I've ever
heard. It is spring here my beautiful
father, we have taken down your
strawberry boxes, tomato vine trellises,
that is all. Everything else that was you

still stands, as I lay this pen and paper
upon the mahogany table you built
for me, that sits below shallow lamplight,
that courts that of sunset's evening
shade settling against the kitchen

window, beneath dreaming trees.