Do-Over

I get a do-over.
I find Luke laying alive in a crawl space in my house.
He is spent but alive.
He’s filthy, like when he was in the wilderness.
He’s come home.
I lie next to him and hold his hand.
We speak softly.
It’s so wonderful to feel his presence, to be near him.
My heart is so full.

I leave to act.
Soup?
Tea?
A hot bath?

He’s come home.
How can I meet him half way?
How do I help him?
Do I spoil him?
Leave him in the crawl space?
Give him his phone?
His computer?
Will that lead him to contacts that will spoil his resolve?
What is his resolve?

I have the do-over for which I have longed for 3625 days and I can think of nothing I can do.
Shall I just go back and lay next to him?
Is that weird?

I hear a tapping on the window in the living room.
It persisits.
Oh! This is a dream.

I wrestle to stay in my dream, to stay with the precious feeling of Luke,.

The tapping is likely a hummingbird flown into the house.
Are you really going to let a hummingbird, the symbol of so many on the other side, die so you can stay in a dream, lucid though it may be?

The here.
The perceieved.
The crossroads twixt the living and the dead.

I choose the living.
I go to the hummingbird.
He turns from his tappings to face me and spins leaving through the open balcony doors.
He didn’t need my help.
He wanted my attention.

Trying to get back into my dream, to the feeling of what it was to be near my boy.
I try to remember the details, to find a way in…
Computer? phone? bath? tea? food? hold his hand? is it weird?…..

There’s no way back, instead… a cold and heavy dawning, without fear or panic that despite the constant coulda, shoulda, wouldas of the past 10 years I have no clue what I could, should or would do if I got another chance.

Am I being told to choose life and stop with the guilt trip?
Sounds like Luke.