Maybe the saddest thing I've lived through so far

Was watching a beautiful little bald-headed

Seven-year-old boy

Dying of leukemia.

He threw up on me once

While I slept beside him

And in the morning we had a puppet show.

He had several puppets and somehow

I envied him.

I went to school that day after being at

His house for a weekend

I brought his wolf hand-puppet to school with me-

I stole it from him,

I don't know why,

But I did and it was the one thing

I felt guilty about for a really long time

Wondering if he looked for it after I was gone,

Wanting it more than all the others,

Or, even worse,

Feeling betrayed,

Knowing I took it.

And I remember now

Twenty years removed

That he begged his mother

My dear sweet Aunt,

To do something,

He told her,

Repeatedly,

That he didn't want to die.

How any mother or father survives such a thing

Is beyond me.

It's a strength probably that

I'll never know.

Treated in Greece,

Subjected to Chemo,

Radiation,

God knows what else,

What a world we live in!

And how to reconcile it to a child when

I can't wrap my own mind around it even now.

I think maybe it's been ten years

Since I've really thought about him,

A really prescient memory as I have now,

Not only of him,

But of his family

His house

Our lives together

And with all the others.

I feel guilty about it now and then,

Having let it go

So long ago

And not bearing to revisit it.

He was my friend and,

I loved him then and

Even more now,

As I am more capable.

I love him and his little seven-year-old

Heart of gold and

Defiant Rage.

But the dead must bury the dead,

Whatever that could mean.

It is the way it must be and,

If I were in the ground

Maybe he'd feel the same

Love, and

Guilt, and

Heartbreak.

My heart aches,

Salty tears trail through my beard

Onto my lips and tongue.

The taste is distinct and familiar,

I haven't forgotten it.

Now I picture this same kid

Lying on the ground in some

Third world hell,

Without his mother,

His family,

Anything to eat

Treatment in Greece,

Chemo,

Radiation,

Wolf hand-puppets or thieving

Best-friend cousins,

Chums,

Anyone that cares,

Begging out in loneliness and fear,

"I don't want to die!"

This is the world we live in.

Having said that,

Lying in the dark unable to

Pay someone

To turn the lights back on,

Seems trivial at best.

Mostly I bump nouns against verbs,

And a sneaky little

Altogether meaningless dangling participle

Here or there,

Just a game I play,

But

For one night only,

I tell the truth...

And what a knock in the teeth

As I'm wrapping up

That a St. Jude's commercial should run,

With the little children,

Bald and frail-

A night cap with

My night cap.

And I tell myself,

"Sleep, you Devil,

You'd better go to sleep.

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