Poem: “My First Death”

This old bastard I knew left
me a couple of things
before he died, though it's
more like I just had them.
One was a Gameboy he bought
in an effort to take his mind off the chemo, one was a condom,
and he gave me a shaky old electric
razor too, which I was afraid to use
after seeing some furry-looking
lint leftover from his face
inside. My girlfriend doesn't
know this guy but as we pillow-
talk about whether we
should do it, I realize
That I need to find the condom.
He gave it to me as a man-
to-man thing, unlike the Gameboy which I
just picked up one day and took
to my room while he was stuck
in his hospital bed, incapable
of games or coming after me.
To start playing I had to delete this old
guy's progress for some reason-
and some really colorful screen

Are you sure you'd like to
ERASE ALL PREVIOUS DATA? YES or NO
waited for an answer... What
if he got healthy again
and wanted to use it again,
once more? What if
he turned it on again, and saw
it was all erased, all gone?
I asked Mom and she
said it's yours now. He won't be able to,
so go ahead and delete it. Go ahead
and delete, she said, because he was
her friend. And so
I pressed the button. But I wish I hadn't

lost the condom Harry gave me.
I could really use it now
that we need to move on.