2:41 a.m.
lights my darkened apartment with a dim red glow,
and I am sitting bolt upright on my mattress on the floor,
exposing flabby white stomach and sporadically hairy chest.
My head is pointed directly up at the ceiling
and the blood is dripping from my nose
along the back of my throat
and drying in rivulets on my exposed skin.

When children go off to college, their parents can finally relax,
and the fights end, and the problems melt away,
is what I told him in the driveway.
There were sleeves and pant legs hanging from his suitcase.
His ears were listening, but his face wasn't.
When he slammed the door -
ending my fatherhood -
it was another tiny cut from which I could bleed.

But I'm not in that driveway anymore.
I'm in an entirely different situation.
I'm hunched over a sink,
at three in the morning
watching as drop by drop my blood
my own blood
trickles down the drain.