The Stone in Your Chest (Lynne S Viti)
I never want to walk through the black door you’ve negotiated, Into the place where mothers bury their sons. --You didn’t want to, either. You deserved years of bonding, smiling at the way things turned out well after the hard years, the impossible maze your adolescent traipsed.
No matter the cause, it’s the backwardness of it that Makes no sense. It’s the years that knit us to the children, Then the final rift that drains away all hope. All reason.
If the end is drawn out, hours at the bedside, Your child on catheters and tubes, fighting a good fight, The end might mix relief, fatigue and endless loss, A bitter cocktail at best.
If death is quick, unexpected, it could be worse—planes fall Out of the sky, a user takes enough of the drug to feel heroic, exceptional, and then takes more, falls into the arms of Thanatos, son of Night and Darkness, The shock, the sequel of the overdose stuns.
Or the intentional, planned and executed death— 66