Inside the Raft

I ran outside.
Your brother was lying dead in the street
And you stood on the sidewalk
Screaming
Your hands covering your mouth.
I softened my focus
In order to determine the greatest need:
Three passers-by crowded over the body
Unwilling or unable to know its lifelessness
And you stood on the sidewalk
Fuzzy with perpetual motion
Screaming.
I grabbed you.

I grabbed you and I held on tight
Attempting to fuse your spirit back to its base
Keep you from killing yourself or
Tearing your hair from its roots.
Your hands over your mouth
Your hands in your hair.
The rocking, the stutter, the sobbing, the
Screaming.
You were fourteen, and your six year-old brother
Was dead in the street
Dragged by the truck
Library books in the road.
I held you.

“It’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault,”
You chanted.
“Oh god, I want to die. Please let me die.”
You tore your hair,
And I held you.
“I know that you don’t understand,”
I said, softly,
“But it’s not your fault.”
And I held you.
“God is great.
You must pray.”
And I held you.
I held you, and your head fell back,
Mud meeting heavens, and you cried
Dios mio ayúdame, ayúdame
Ay, Dios mio, ayuda….

Later
Seconds. Minutes. A million years
Later a librarian asked you about
Your mother.
“At home,” you stammered.
I took out my phone and took you by the shoulders.
“I need you to tell me your phone number.”
Suddenly you stopped moving
Condensing your energy into
Ten points of focus.
“3. Oh. 3…”
“Does she speak English?”
You nodded.
I stepped away.

Right before your mother answered
I thought of my own mother.
I saw her drop the phone
Scream, go limp, evaporate
Incinerate, disintegrate, combust
Liquefy, and disappear.
The who and where must come first,
I knew,
Before the what and why.
She answered.
“You don’t know me.
My name is Andrea.
I am on the corner of Mississippi and Tejón.
I am with your daughter and she is fine,
But there has been an accident –”
The line went dead.

So quickly the afternoon was ruined.
So rapidly the crowd gathered
So shattered was the light,
The November side-light
The near-dusk, disappearing-trick,
Glinting, glancing, entrancing light
The light your brother ran into
The last light
The only light that mattered
As it shattered
As first the truck
And then the trailer
Jolted, bumped, took hold,
Would not let go
Thirty feet
A stripe of rubber
Ending in the gutter
Where now the paramedics bent
Over the body of your brother.

I felt myself spinning
With the rotating lights
Hearing cries yet seeing beauty
In the way the four men lifted your mother
Dragging her to the grass
As though she’d been deboned.
Beauty in a woman, her hand
Flat on the top of your head, praying
Praying to God, entreating the sky
Dios es poderoso
Dios es fuerte
Dios en su sabiduria
Proteja esta niña
Protéjala, proteja
In your mercy
In your wisdom….
And then they took him.

No one would say
What at least one librarian already knew.
She had tried.
She had pressed his chest,
Blown air into his tiny mouth.
She was back inside the library,
A woman told me,
In the bathroom
Throwing up.

You were finally sitting
On the sidewalk
And I knelt at your feet
Both of my hands on your body.
I could feel you heaving
And I had nothing left to say.
I was near and also far,
Witnessing the tilt from denial to pain.
I could not turn off the beauty
No matter how shattered the light.
Your soft hair
Your long road
Your mother’s grief
And the driver
To your mother
How he held her
How he cried
How he looked her in the eye
And apologized
And the rocking
Like a raft
And all of us were in it.
Together,
Broken and weathered,
Alive.