when you are — hooligan mag

by Josh Shepard

when you are laying in your hospital bed, you are still
in a bar throwing blows taking no shit

when you are up at night coughing and struggling
to inhale, you are breathing life into your children

when your family sees the strength leaving your bones
they are on your shoulders you are on their shoulders

when you look in the mirror all skin and bones
you will remember and feel the fullness of cheeks

when your friends are too scared to come and see you
your mouths have yet to learn how to hold each other’s name

when you look at my picture four years old
and in my cowboy hat I am smoking a Marlboro 100

when we are crowded around your hospital bed it
is the family dinner table at your mother’s house you are the stew

when they’ve dug up your photos before you’ve even gone
(grief comes before ghost)
see how you were beautiful then now

when the light fades from your eyes and you are
no more, you are

Josh Shepard is a poet and artist living in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Central Oklahoma. A writer of poems, flash fiction, screenplays, and more, his work can be found most recently in New Plains Review and in Waxwing.