I hear a steady beeping and this room is getting colder by David Colodney

Sons, the grandfather who didn't live long enough to meet you asks me in Winston 100 smoke-rings whisper what you're like. He's sitting in his powder blue recliner - the one where he watches the News at 10 & then The Benny Hill Show before the orange smolder of his cigarette butt fades to a flicker in the black plastic ashtray that rests on a folding table by his left arm. His smoke circles like an oasis & disappears & he falls asleep doing this routine each night of the week. I struggle for adjectives & adverbs to describe you guys as I blink through tears & IVs hearing my dad, gone 30-plus years, question me in a fog of words & discordant machines emitting metronome noises over the air conditioner's hum. My old man's only son describing his sons to a ghost in a blue post office button down short sleeve work shirt, thick bifocals in tortoise shell frames & all I want to tell him is how I've been & what I've done & that I'm ok. But we'll catch up soon, Dad. Knowing we'll grab a bagel & instant coffee somewhere soothes me as the nurses recycle in symphonic movements, adjusting my drips, checking off charts at the foot of my bed. I may be crying. This room may be raining. What's left of my eyes dances between you three, my sons now guardians, as you look to the nurses & then back to me & the monitors & back at me & my eyes flutter like shutters in summer storms, my lips like a vacant orbit, a vapor whisper.
Dad.

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David Colodney is a poet living in Boynton Beach, Florida. He is the author of Gen X Redux, forthcoming in 2026 from Main Street Rag Publishing, and the chapbook Mimeograph (Finishing Line Press, 2020). A three-time Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared in multiple journals. David currently serves as an associate editor of South Florida Poetry Journal and is an ardent supporter of Liverpool Football Club.