They are pasty and fidgeting,
not quite committed to sitting in chairs. 

At this moment there’s nothing to do
but be here in their heavy chains

drinking weak coffee.  We, the broken families,
drive for hours with sharpened pencils

to take notes, support our fading
loved ones. They’re not dead yet

but not quite living, either, reeking 
of cigarettes, unlaundered sweatshirts, greasy hair. 

We’re beyond slamming doors,
beyond shock and tears, beyond our savings,

hearing how their worlds’ unknotted,
and the rough statistics, only twenty-five per cent

survive. We learn there’s no predicting who.
We have nothing left to say to one another

(it’s our second go around in rehab)
so he tries to make a joke about the checklist

of factors on the addiction handout:
family history, depression, anxiety,

peers using drugs, early drug use, risk takers.
Look, mom, he says, I hit every one.

Someone has to haul
all our crap up hill,
make appointments, cancel,
reschedule. Make excuses. Cover 
when the son’s face goes red and blotchy,
nose stuffs up. Or, more alarming,
he shakes in a warm shower,
shakes under the quilt, shakes
out the words I’ll be all right
from a sheet white face gone angular,
then I don’t know. Someone
calls 911, ignores the neighbors’
stares, fits herself into a side seat
in the ambulance, says the word heroin
out loud, holds the puke pan, admits

she’s his mother. Someone sits
with a panicked patient now pacing
in wait for the psych consult, neuro,
clergy. Someone steps to the curb
outside the hospital to hail a cab
while the son gathers his bathrobe around him,
and shuffles to the door in slippers brought
from home. Someone calls the father,
says yes cancel everything and come
so we can sit and weep together and alone 
and hang on, as if his life depends on it.