Blue On Blue

3:16 AM, emergency entrance, county general-
I was propped against the rear doors of a rig
parked in Bay 5, close to where the docs smoke
with cigarettes tucked behind their palms,
furtive anarchists flicking ash at the don't-do-that sign
while people shift back and forth around them

and I was thinking about this tweaker kid
we brought in on a dead run; skull a cracked vault,
his secrets betrayed on the floor beneath my boots

I was thinking about how he wouldn't
stop breathing; how the noise of anatomy
dogged collapsed lines in fibrillating waves

I was thinking about a girl in a dirty blue skirt
sitting on a curb with his blood on her knees,
how her face pulled away in the rear-view like a scream

I was thinking about how an intern
with two silver loops in his ear hummed 'Blue on Blue'
under his breath as we gave our report to a nurse

I thought about these things
I watched the guards watch me
I didn't clean any secrets from the rig
I did sit down on the step plate
I picked at the wick of my zippo
I whistled the intern's song

somewhere behind me
a girl with bloody knees sits on a curb
pulling threads from the hem of a cheap skirt.