Empty Nest: raw poem (you can never and completely understand)

In hotel room bed ten feet from me
but well out of reach
the boy sleeps
fitfully
heady with things I know so
well
things I can never
know
pain i have lived
and can't see,
pain
i can
never save him from.

The boy
rolls away
away
his vibrating phone
shaking with the texts
that are ever-present these days

away from where
I sit
sentient
and toward the window
where sunlight filters in.

He yanks at the sheets,
heady with nerves and
sleepy excitement,
with exhaustion and
fear
and the unknown.

I sit in a chair
quiet,
unmoving,
a cup of
lukewarm coffee gripped in my aging hand.

If I don't move maybe I can fool the clock
stop time
hold on just a little more.

After a half-managed breath,
I pick up the laptop
and type
wise to the truth that
I cannot win
I am nothing more than a deer stuck
in
headlights.

I take a sip and type
(what I do, what I do. . . )
trying not to notice my shorts-clad legs jutting from the cold metal,
exposed thighs
bearing skin that betrays me more and more these days.
Time marches
Waits for no one.

The boy sleeps,
but soon he will wake
and I
will
type and type
and
(somehow)
drive away.