About the time that the skin around his eyes
and behind his ears matches the evening sky
(black and blue, ****** pockets of purple),
a nurse asks me what happened and I tell her,
against white walls, and over a pile of bruised meat,
and beneath the phantom of a prognosis that includes
the words "injury" and "traumatic" and "brain" which seeped into
the atmosphere hours, but that doesn't make any sense,
because just seconds ago we were drinking
from cheap bottles, the color of honey or flypaper
depending on the place, we had black comedy
smeared across our faces like thick shadows under lamp lights,
we were stumbling across a road together
through the city's living darkness and we were twelve
and we were twenty-four and we were forty-five
all at once and that doesn't make any sense, but it's true.
A nurse asks me what happened and I tell her. But
I leave out the flashbang between the parenthesis,
the part where given the choice
between grabbing him or saving myself,
space and time come undone in the headlights of a truck
and I'm back on the sidewalk before you can say
"self-preservation."
The nurse tells me it was lucky I was there,
and a little clear fluid leaks out of his nose in tacit agreement.