by Chad Haskins

3:00 A.M.,
twenty years in the making,
finally…the bitch is leaving,
forty-eight hours straight.

Half-brother remains,
smoking a cigarette outside,
packing heat.

I sneak in a side door,
pushing a food cart
to enter the wing,
looking left and right,
hearing beeps and moans;
I see my name on the door.

Drifting inside,
tubes in his nose,
white hair,
lifeless,
I nudge him–nothing.

Kneeling,
face to face,
feeling 7 years old,
I smell my daddy.

If he saw me, he’d press
the panic button,
but I caress his forehead
and weep.

Chad Haskins lives in Newnan, Georgia with his wife and two sons. Chad’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Rose and Thorn Journal, Blue Collar Review, Untitled Country Review, Powder Burn Flash, The 5-2, Yellow Mama, Spinetingler Magazine, drown in my own fears, Golden Sparrow Literary Review, Flashes in the Dark, Dark River Magazine, and The Flash Fiction Offensive.