Roger Soffer

Hollywood Presbyterian

Three days before your eighteenth birthday
I see the ghost of you before your death
and we are dropped to our knees on the stained concrete
and you cannot touch the callouses on my hand
and I cannot touch your bands of fading light
and this is nine months before you’d otherwise
be thrust into the world of men
and I will myself to see you solid,
flexing yourself with the grin of someone who’s lived,
not wracked and buckled in the ER,
puke like broken teeth between your lips,
and the waiting room filled with tattoos and cornrows,
and the double-thick glass at reception,
and three door guards chuckling at the MMA choke-out
while your blood pressure unsteadily drops to your age,
and I do not let myself comfort you for what you have done
even when you find me through the haze of your madness
and slur, I’m sorry, dad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry
and the Mexican lady next to you clutches her stomach
and the all-night paramedics lean against the wall
and at 3:42 a.m. the doctor hunches over her desk
calling her own son to make sure he’s alive
and at last your convulsions slow, your neck untwists
and your eyes — not yours, some beast’s — begin to close
and this was Halloween and those aren’t hookers,
just girls sunk in dreams and straps and IV tubes,
and it will be two days before I am struck down
by the near loss of you, the ghost of you,
you who were born choking, whose face was blue,
whose fists were clenched in fury and defiance,
you, who screamed to live --
                                                   now live, live.