ride

There are so many faces. Little, beautiful, innocent faces. The ones we couldn't save. Every week they have more company. There are so, so many that we are able to pull back from the other side, but it's the few we can't.... I can still see them, after all these years. In the end, I always stay with them, after all the ER heroes are gone, I stay. I clean them (after the Homicide Unit does their thing) I wrap them, I take them to the morgue, I, as genitally as possible, place them in the cooler. I weep for every fuckin one of them, for the playground they'll never see again, for the drawings they'll never finish. For the parents that will never hold them again.

It's late at night, as I watch my son, my life, my everything, sleep, that I see their faces. And as I wipe my tears from my son's face, I appreciate every day that we're still here.