I saw a dead boy once—
he was laid out flat on a restroom floor
with pockets emptied and clothes sliced open,
like an unwanted present.

In the classroom, when they talk about hypoxia
they always mention the blue lips—
which makes it hard to push aside the memory
of lips dyed blue and dripping in the summer heat,
the clinkety music of ice cream trucks
and the soft sound of bird toes
touching down on asphalt.

But the dead boy’s lips weren’t that kind of blue,
and there were no ice cream trucks and no birds.
It was all florescent lights and grimy tiles,
dirty needles and the stale stench of urine.
And the boy wasn’t a boy at all, really.
He was a man—25 years old
and all at once blue and all at once gray.

The paramedic moved like a machine,
but I could see the sweat on his forehead,
and I knew that he was all fire—
dressed up as a cool glass of water,
dripping with condensation
as he reached for the boy’s heart
with each pump—down and up and down and up.

I watched a boy come back to life once—
A boy who wasn’t really a boy,
who was blue but not that kind of blue,
who was all at once dead but not anymore,
opened his eyes and looked at me—

he looked at me and he said:
Please don’t tell my parents.

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