sixty

By the time I skid my bike to a stop the whole town’s on Logan’s street. The neighbors, the cops, the ambulances, everywhere there’s ambulances and everywhere there’s doctors and EMTs and IVs and bodies. There’s bodies.

There’s bodies on the stretchers.

One of the stretchers is going one way, in a hurry, surrounded by EMTs and IVs and orders being barked. The other stretchers are going in the other direction, more slowly, there’s nothing there. No urgency. Nothing.

On the first stretcher, swarming with EMTs, there’s a little sock. A little sock coming out with R2-D2. There’s a little sock coming out and I know that sock because that’s Billy’s sock and he was wearing that sock the night Logan put him to bed and now that sock is soaked with blood and I can see it out the stretcher. Now that sock is soaked in blood now that stretcher is getting put in that ambulance and I’m not the only one seeing that sock and everyone, everyone has their hands to their mouths because everybody is seeing that sock.

And behind that stretcher, glued to that stretcher are Logan’s mom and Logan’s kid brother, still in his camouflage sleeper. And his mom and his brother are hurrying in, hurrying in behind, glued to that stretcher, being carried away, too, lights swirling round and round, fast enough. It’s gone, it’s gone. That means hope. There’s hope for that stretcher.

And now there’s a second stretcher. God, please stop pulling out stretchers from that house but no one is listening no one is listening and here comes another one.

This one is big. A big body, a big, big body and something silent here. And that sheet is coming all the way up. And that stretcher is going slow. But that’s two, that’s two stretchers coming out from that house and that’s enough Lord, please Lord, make that enough but it’s not enough it’s not enough and now the front door opens and it’s one more.

The front door opens and it’s one more.

And there is that hand. And there are those feet. And that is the hand that tucked in those R2-D2 socks under those Star Wars sheets. That is the hand that tucked in that Spider-Man sleeper. That is the hand that reached out to me and pulled me next to him and flew me past the trees on his moped. That is the hand that I dreamed about last night. That is the hand on that body that was supposed to be next to me, on that body that I fell in love with and that head and that heart, too. That is the hand and it’s not moving.

It’s not moving.