I slowly, silently hang up the phone.
He walks into the kitchen & I tell him
the wait is over.
I want to hold him,
need to feel the solidity of his form,
to hear a kind word of comfort from my father.
& he knows.
He knows that Steven,
my best friends father who had taken me in
and treated me as his own
has died of lung cancer @ age 38.
(Christians don’t cover their dead,
and I distinctly remember being able to see
the stitches holding his eyes & mouth shut.)
He says I should learn from this,
then bums a smoke
and walks away
mumbling something about
how a 13 yr old kid
could get cigarettes in the first place.