Sleeping with my father
was never easy
– which is just about
what you’d expect.
Each of our snores would punctuate the others’
loud enough to wake the dead
making it hard for either of us
to truly catch any quality zzzs.

So I slept with my father
infrequently, often finding other ways
to get through the night
but when we broke him
out of a Charlotte hospital
it proved important to be aware
if he made it through the night.
Because of this
and my wild-eyed interstate terror
my father was not much disturbed by my noisy nose at all that night.

Now
I no longer sleep with my father
as he sleeps with fishes
resting in peace
dirt napping his days away.
Anyway, I got a CPAP.
You’d think it would make things easier.