A Chemical Suicide

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.

Orphan Boy in the Arcade

He inserts his last quarter into the Pac-Man Machine,

bouncing on his tip-toes, his sneakers slap his heels

like flip-flops. Duct tape poorly covers holes

in the middle of his sweatshirt, elbow skin flashing

with the movement of his skinny arms

as he moves the joystick, avoiding another Ghost.

Skin black with dirt where his knee shows under

ripped blue jeans.

I never asked his name.

We formed a routine each morning,

he would wait for me as I raised the gate

to the small arcade, lights on,

radio set low as we exchanged money.

He never failed to show with a twenty,

a return of eighty quarters in a large green

bowl, his hands much too small to handle

the change on his own. He would immediately

return to his Pac-Man game and insert

the first quarter, toes his only support

in reaching the joystick and white buttons.

I checked all the consoles in the shop

before dragging a chair over to the boy

who was happy to kneel on the cushion

and rest his feet.

At lunch I would pull out

a turkey and swiss sandwich, Doritos

and a few Oreos. I’d call over the orphan

boy to share my stash before we both

resumed to our posts.

No words exchanged,

silence was all we needed,

a mutual understanding of space

and hunger was the building blocks

to our companionship.

The beeps of the game fill the room,

the boy could lose now or in ten minutes,

either way I need to close shop when he finishes.

A woman of medium stature stumbles

into the arcade, paper sack concealing

bottle cradled to her chest. I open my mouth,

utter an objection of her entrance and the time

but she flicks a dirtied palm in my direction.

She yanks the boy off the blue chair,

his sneakers drag across the dark

galaxy carpeting as his eyes widen.

The orphan didn’t resist, he knew

not to get in the way of a mother

and the child she cradled in her arms.