The Works of Alecia Shepherd

An Undertaking

A little girl sits in the shadowy corner of a hospital room,
her timid form is surrounded by a pile of electrical cords,
a jumble of wires that resembles a plate of un-sauced spaghetti.
She is wearing a little dress, a simple, purest-white little dress,
a cotton weave which fully covers her lanky body,
hides her body entirely from sight, a quiet little ghost of a girl.
Her feet are bare, her hair unmade, pressed straight and flat
against her back, it drapes her slouch in soft wavy auburn tresses.
The floor is the color and disposition of dire ice,
the same which turns late winter into a world of sparkling crystal.
She sniffles, wipes her chapped nose and eyes with her forearm,
the palms of her hands, dries them with cabal wipes across her slip,
just as she has been told to never do,
a hundred times, a thousand times, how many times?
In the corner, a brave little girl, cold, isolated, in control,
control of what or whom, she cannot begin to fathom.
In control, yet controlled and under duress of time,
pressed hard by the badger of incessant phone calls,
calls from nurses, from doctors, her own calls begging mercy,
she reaches out for mercy to deacons, pastors, family and friends,
and oh, those deacons of the Assembly of God nearby,
men who rush to her when summoned, rushed to her aid,
to her father they speed, day after day, in her stead.
They whisper to her father, to the little girl, a distant stranger,
who for fifteen years at a time avoids, forgets his little girl.
A man of sorts, of grunts, farts, belches and snorts, her father.
Barely but always seen through a thick, pungent nimbus of tobacco smoke,
black cherry, rich, sweet, from the scorched wooden bowl of a simple pipe.
Her father, always eats too much pork, cooks with far too much oil,
leers at teenage girls as he drives by them in his huge black truck.
His head is full of wicked desires, bad jokes and false teeth,
dentures which he pops half out of his mouth as he leers, snickers,
as if he needs to add to the creepy, unnatural sensation
that even the dogs snap their teeth at when near him.
Connoisseur, voyeur, of little girls swimming the public pool, watching.
Her father, still a man of sorts, covered by a warm hospital blanket,
a simple, coarse blanket the shade of a cool November morning,
his lungs, his heart, his stomach, his intestines,
his arteries, his kidneys, his liver, his colon,
all with their functions replaced by machines and electricity,
everything but odor is hidden beneath the blanket and little else.
Her father, four months and going, adorns his bed, bloated, weak, pale.
A hole in his belly is kept open, sore, bleeding, reeking,
as he, alone and dying on a harsh railed bed, habitation of regrets,
fills his solitary room at a university hospital in Kentucky,
land of bluegrass, horses, Derby Pie and poverty-fuelled drunkenness.
The corroded innards of a very poor man, sustained artificially,
scooped clear of waste through the hole in his belly
by nurses protected by latex, nurses he would have leered at on a better day.
His false teeth, gone from his head, have little use anymore.
This shell of a man feeds intravenously, suckles at plastic tubes,
helpless and hurting with a hole in his belly like the day he was born.
He has rails for bars, and this man reduced to infancy,
is kept ever so clean and safe by his bed cover,
a simple cloth with no pattern, pastel blue, stained and frightful,
like the one that had delivered him into his first embrace,
his mother's embrace, the face of a foul and cruel woman
who had chosen to never been seen by her son's little girl.
The smell of feces in the air, of bile, of blood and raw meat,
mingle with the chemical staunch of the sterile hospital air.
The girl wipes and dries again as she wrests empathy from the grip of her past,
overcomes a lost childhood, an absent daddy, thankfully absent father,
for the sake of this male figure's eternity, her choice, her hands.
Should her father get what he deserves, or should grace prevail?
Punishment or peace, Heaven or Hell, her fingers work the skein.
The decision is hers, hers alone, as is the undertaking of her burden,
to handle a body, forgive a heart, renew a mind, to save a soul,
carry the small but heavy corpse of a homeless stranger.
She wonders if she will be lashed to a corpse as it rots,
or if she will find freedom, somehow, for the both of them.
The will of a tortured little girl, her tears, a man's labored, mechanical breath,
an ice cold hospital room full of shadows plays host to daughter and father.
Again, her father, though not so much of a dad to her,
but a man, oh most certainly, he had been in misdeed.
A male, who upon the innocence of his first-born child,
had spilled his manhood, into her hands, against her face, to say, "I love you."
Years of pain, portraits of her shame painted in tears and nail polish,
with only herself to blame, the poor ravaged little girl.
Her legs cramp as she sits so long, just long enough,
on the terribly merciless floor, she remains, unable to rest.
She waits for the trumpet to sound as she argues between spirit and flesh,
beats her past into the ground with bruised, bloodied fists.
She remembers the heart of Jesus, the Christ,
remembers how hard her father could swing a switch,
sets her eyes, her motive, her attitude, her burden, on her loving God,
and with His help, forgets her offense bit by bit,
tries with all her might to forego the chance for vengeance,
vindication, she sets in a place far behind herself.
A lonely little girl struggles to do what is right
in spite of how she has been wronged.
She hears and heeds the call to rescue her father
a voice demands from nearly three thousand miles away.
But she waits, watches, listens, yearns for the light.
The deacons call, like beacons, they call, phones tremble,
after two weeks, two long, horrible weeks,
their visitations and careful words have claimed a new light.
The girl, trapped in that room, that stolid, breathless room,
her father, and she, trapped between life and death, are finally set free.
For the first time in far too long, she smiles,
Preparations are already made regardless of how her choice may have swayed.
There would be no earth to move, no marker to carve,
no meal for the worms, but a flame to send her father on.
His ashes would be scattered to a gentle summer stream,
a creek popping with life, ablaze with vibrant trees and umbrage, all full of switches.
Her father, fisherman, hunter, butcher, is to be honored somehow,
this male whose heart of stone, black pitch, has become a symphony of joy and praise,
whose cruelty was met with inconceivable kindness and forgiveness,
whose filth was overlooked, covered in blood, purified with living water,
whose life of selfish ignorance was saved by such sweet charity,
whose body, once a weapon poised to slay the gentle spirit,
the unsung spirit of his very own daughter,
the very same girl that held his fate,
God's precious little girl, with her smile soaked in tears,
grips and tugs at a stiff white coil,
commits her action to the boundless mercy, love and grace of her Lord, Jesus Christ.
Her father, the man, the male, the molester, the abuser, the liar dispersed,
washed away like so much beach under the break of ocean waves, foam and sand.
A new creation, God's new son, her father, prodigal child, a babe of faith's gift,
crawls home.