By Matthew Hopkins
Just wanted you to know it’s never-ending, this. The cancer grows and dad gets smaller.
I couldn't sleep last night and I was thinking about February. You drove three hours
through a thunderstorm to get me. We thought we were going to die on the motorway
and you said that’s the last thing we need. I could smell the rain from the third floor of
the hospital.
Come March, your funeral shirt got too big and ulcers fell out of my mouth every time I
opened it. I filled the gaps in my spine with anti-homeless spikes but it did nothing —
you still live there. Dad said you’d come around.
When we watched his dad, his brother, his mum, die of the same thing, he said shoot
me before I ever get that ill. It's the one thing I hope he doesn’t remember.
I spent today pulling teeth from the tumour. Just wanted you to know.
Matthew Hopkins (he/him) is a transgender poet and writer based in the Midlands, with a degree in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. He writes about music, queerness, and ghosts. He is a loving father to about four houseplants and a dog the size of an underachieving horse. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram.
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