Trembling,
he sits and waits for the news.
His
mother called during a Chemistry
test,
his favorite class.
“Tyler,”
she said,
“I
need you, come home.”
He
never heard such sorrow
Soaked
into her voice
Like
water to an overwrought sponge.
It
leaked from her, dripped
from
every word and froze
on
the back of his neck
while
he ran two blocks home
his
backpack left on the back of a chair.
He
sat in the Emergency Room
listening
to the mix of beeps from separate
heart
monitors and the shuffling of feet
across
the symmetrical white tile.
He
found it hard to breathe
in
the sterility of what they claimed
to
be Oxygen in the large waiting room.
He
didn’t have asthma but the way he took
each
breath could have fooled the best of doctors.
A
drowning man’s dying breath
couldn’t
compare to the oxygen he lacked,
couldn’t
compare to the battle his lungs
fought
to keep working properly.
He
desperately looked around
For
a single air bubble to breathe in,
A
sliver of hope that could possibly save a life.
A
lone high-shrilled beep
and
it was all done.
White
lab coat walking over,
the
sterility of his hands
Like
the bleached bones of Death.
Apologies,
meaningless words
said
over and over to hundreds
of
thousands daily. He stared
at
his own hands that still twitched
with
the answers to his chemistry test.
Hands
that had only known a world
Of
education now squeezing
Each
other tighter and tighter
As if the pin-pricks of heated
discomfort
could
bring his mother back to him.
