What to tell him?
"I wish you a box of chocolates",
"Thank you for the fifty bucks"?
Or better yet,
"I'm sorry about your son".
Silence on the other end
The wire gone dead after several beats
of emotional strobe lights,
succumb to your sorrow
that maudlin phase after prolonged shock.
I wish that you were anyone else:
a cross-dresser/drag queen
at Madame Jojo's;
a far-fetched gambler at my door;
some suave dolt who is pining love;
than what you actually are.
I wish you were drunk
your military boy bitching at you
instead of his body six feet
under you,
stone cold sober on the couch.
Nasty, nasty, woeful man.