by Brian Lee Klueter

My grandpa takes out a comb and runs it through his thin graying hair; this is the forty-sixth time he has done this in the past hour. My grandma stands next to him crying, unable to say anything without being distracted by her watery vision, the inside of her glasses splashed with tears. I walk up to my grandpa, take him by the shoulders and look him in the eye. “Your son is dead,” I say. He stares at me with a millisecond of concern, as if for a moment he knows where he is, what he’s doing, and why we’re all here at the hospital. I am fooled, as always, by how easily I accept his concern as genuine, as if by some miracle he will understand me. Instead, fate has me reiterating the pain out loud to both my grandma and me, over and over. He stares at me curiously with a half-smile, not sure how to proceed. My grandpa takes out a comb and runs it through his thin graying hair; this is the forty-seventh time he has done this in the past hour.

Brian Lee Klueter is a creative writing major at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. His love for obscure existential thoughts, along with his fascination of memory loss influence his prose-style poetry.