Popcorn and Needles

I remember how you used to roll your popcorn popper across the floor grinning and not paying attention to where you were going— and how happily you pretended to drive the rusty ’49 GMC pickup I was still trying to restore: Rosie, we called her, after Rosie the Riveter. Remember the didgeridoo? I bought it for you after we saw a performance of a didgeridoo quintet from down under. And you played it too for the rest of the summer. By winter, you’d turned it into a makeshift bong which I discovered accidentally one night in the basement. We took a roadtrip through Mexico once, just the two of us. Boy, was I surprised when needles fell out of your backpack at a military checkpoint. Luckily for you, they believed your story about a diabetic friend who borrowed it— must’ve forgotten to remove his insulin syringes by mistake. Then there was the time I found you passed out on the basement floor, with the needle there beside you — next to the tackle box where you hid your paraphernalia. Your breath was slow and shallow — a frayed thread unraveling — and we didn’t have naloxone so we hauled you to your feet and walked you round the living room as your eyes blinked slowly open, not quite sure where you’d been. And then came the day they said he couldn’t stay with you— not after they found him wandering barefoot down the street— again— sticky with juice and no one watching. Child protective services placed him with your mother— but I still felt the rupture when I learned of it after the fact and you didn’t call. I still see you sometimes— three years old again, popcorn popper clattering wild across the hardwood, grinning and not watching where you were going. I don’t know where you are now. But I hope the light still finds you and brings you an epiphany because your son needs you back and so do I— More than you know.