Richard Siken
Family Therapy
Extract from Twitter
The morning after my father killed his first wife, he woke up next to her dead body, rose from their bed, and began his morning routine. At lunch, from his office, he called the landlord and asked him to check on her. He was worried, he said. The night before, he had taken her pill bottles and lined them up on the bathroom counter. He said unkind things, using words like "burden" and "ruin." He stood in the doorway and wouldn’t lеt her pass until the bottles wеre empty. They went to bed, he said goodnight, she said goodbye, they turned their backs to each other under the thick blankets. This is what he said, my father, in family therapy, a few months before he died.