There are many things I know now.
I know that I’ll be 38, settling into my career, into a life still fresh off the ambition of completing my education, and maybe having picked up a new hobby when my first child dies.
I know that it’ll be in the summer, and I’ll hear the news while sitting at my desk before swapping the fluorescent lights of my work building with those from the hospital, before changing them once again for the bright white bulb above my bathroom sink.
It'll only be at the end of the day when I realize how my leather derbys constricted my feet, tight from a day of walking on linoleum, and how the feeling was always there, settled comfortably in an autonomic neural background along with the whistling of my nose I’ve had since I was 11 or my lumbar pain I’ve had since I was 16.
I’ll realize then, and reflect on how I knew it now, that my dead kid will settle in with some mechanical ease into this napsak part of my brain. There is a pocket prepared and ready for it, and at the end of every day after the summer of my 38th, I will open this bag and review how my back glowered when I bent down to tie my tight leather derbys, the ones that keep rubbing my heels, how my nose softly whistled through lunch, and how my child is dead.

Virginia’s cold in January.
We whisk the air through our teeth, our noses icy and wet, buzzing under the collar of a shirt if you don’t have a scarf.  
I don’t have a scarf.
It’s something I think I'll be fine with, but two weeks into our polar vortexes and I’m regretting not dredging up some forgotten pair from a year prior.
Even with gloves, our fingers lock into an animal’s claw, only to unfurl again in late April when the wind dies down.
I don’t have any gloves.
My last pair ripped on a jagged, steel countertop of some Shafer street buffet. The meal cost me $12.50, a dollar more than last month.

Virginia’s hot in June.
We walk slow in the shade, even slower in the sun. The river gulps more of it down than we ever could, belching out a horrible sulfur smell that tangs the air.
I don’t mind it.
The city bleeds rust after the first heavy rain, the cracked concrete wearing away, each year offering a better foothold for the creeping jenny and the kuzdu's green.  
The thump of a loudspeaker pounds the southside, a heartbeat always present, popping up in this park on Thursday, that porch on Saturday, some festival Friday night.

I don’t mind it at all.

Maroon, dust, old vinyl floors
Creepy dolls on the banister, teacups decorating the mantel
A small and skinny chandelier without candles.

Cold and wet, smooth cement
never AC blowing. Dusty, not *****
Tired and unused. Broken bulbs, 1950s *******, political propaganda from the Vietnam War.

That house, a groaning body with liver failure, the rain through those summer nights, the thick breath of humidity the day after.

Those ***** men
Love you grandpa.

The rattling music, the pins and the stops,
all cycling quickly, some symphony pop
Eyes wish to move freely yet glued to the sight,
of movement that’s aimless, so random and bright
The ball dances slowly, a final refrain
behind, leaving silence, allaying the brain
The cowboy’s hand waving, the flashy machine,
him smiling, lights blinking, the ending of things

Reconciling with silence, the game’s finished now,
the scoring’s not high but the colors won’t tell
You check your back pockets, eyes sweeping the floor,
for someone’s lost quarter to play with once more
But the lights simmer off and the timer rewinds,
the retina’s memory scorched deep in the mind
Him smiling, lights blinking, the ending of things,
reconciling with silence, that pinball machine

The cold-showered mornings of quiet farewells,
the silent rebuttal, where sanity dwells
The sundering dawned with the swing of a hand,
and now, thanks to God, we’re not speaking again.
A poison so deep it's a miracle how
you lived, underfed, in the claws of this town
Reconciling with silence, that pinball machine
Your dad’s rotting lungs that wheezed as we leave

A play so bizarre and the characters, too,
this desperate balance, the acting like fools, with
love that's invisible, pumped through a varicose
vein that connect that **** heart to his face
The rattling music, your painstaking grace to so carefully
pull me away from this place
Your dad’s rotting lungs that wheezed as we leave,
to think of the life that you had at fifteen

No powers at mind can conceive of the sight,
him broken, still fighting, those stained teeth, off-white
Trapped behind glass of the game that he plays,
but we “can’t blame him or the choices he made.”
Him smiling, lights blinking, the ending of things,
Reconciling with silence - that pinball machine.
Your dad’s rotting lungs that wheezed as we leave,
to think of the lives we both lived at fifteen.