Eleventh Hour Eulogy

We thought it was getting better:

just get help, get sober, get prescribed, stay away

from the rifle cabinet, and maybe don’t drive

high out of your mind, or at least call over here

so we can tell your wife you’re alright.

We stayed in New Hampshire the whole

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weekend, but the weed was the worst thing in the bowl,

and the bachelors told him do it now—better 

now before the kid gets here and somehow that night

we ended up brawling on the lawn over the way.

He half-listened but didn’t really hear.

A lot of masked anger waiting for him to want to be alive,

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but also the shame of boys teaching boys to survive

the fear that desperation has a basement or a loophole

that might throw us up right back at the start, when you hear

the cops on your ass and you laugh because getting better

wasn’t possible in the overnight cell, so it was still far away.

It was something we all wanted until it was right

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up in your face, and then it was hard to bite

down on. He would laugh like he was being eaten alive

from the inside and after awhile we had to walk away.

One of us had to work in the morning, so we gave him the remote control

and a punch in the mouth and waited for him to get better.

He was supposed to beat it like the rest of us here,

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or maybe he would struggle forever but he would be here

and we would curse him and scream at him and fight

like we wanted him dead for wanting it himself—but better

wasn’t happening. I think I knew it the last time I saw him alive,

when from opposite sides of the room we called each other asshole.

Tenderness, the forbidden word—when turning away

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from what could be was his only way

out, he said it just loud enough to hear,

but I refused to let on, gave him an eye-roll

and the finger, probably turned off the overhead light

because trust was not what I wanted at twenty-five.

And so—somehow, we thought it was getting better—

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except we were never better to him, he was stuck here

and already left behind, at the shallow pond getting frostbite,

making the drive down alone and hitting every pothole.

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