Final Stretch of Childhood

Midnight, sitting at the kitchen table,

the only light in the house, hanging above us.

My son, nearly 19, complains about cancel culture,

how TikTok and Instagram are judge, jury and executioner!

If you make a mistake and it’s caught on video,

millions of people will know and then you’re done.

I suggest he turn off the apps.

Mom, you’re so old, you don’t know how life works.

Images shifting at bandsaw speed –

shoes, cars, girls, memes of cats, enemy forces –

he’s on his phone all day, no patience for reading.

He shows me his screen, it moves too fast to focus.

I’d like to take you camping in the woods for a month –

no phone, no computer. He asks, why would you do that?

So, you can get your soul back, be in your body.

He replies, I know how to be in my body, I just watch

this stuff so I don’t have to feel my feelings.

He shows me a meme of Papa John’s founder,

apparently crucified for using the “N-word.”

I tell him it’s okay to makes mistakes, it’s how we learn,

besides, who wants to eat pizza from a racist, homophobic prick?

Now you’re a hypocrite, he tells me.

For half an hour he doesn’t look at his phone.

I’m glad he’s talking to me, even though it’s after midnight,

he can’t sleep because of the Red Bull. When I got up to pee,

I heard him in the hallway, asked how he was.

I quiet my breathing, listen to his clean tenor voice,

watch the flesh of him fill the air – Apple watch,

black Save the Bees hoodie, Fear of God sweatpants,

Nike high tops, purple pimples on his chin, long covid hair –

he’ll leave for college in August and when will he sit with me again?