The Black Napkin Volume 1 Issue 7 | Page 6

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The man who sold stories outside of the bars

practiced them on me sometimes. He’d pace

with his whiteboard, recount someone else’s acid trip,

or that time a girl was shot at a party and crawled

outside to get help. She was the lifesaver.

Once, we ran into each other on the street

at 2am after the bars had closed. We walked together

through a cold rain to grab coats for a party, meanwhile

blanketed ourselves with exhilaration. He carried me

part of the way, and it’s the only time I hollered in this

small town. There, he floated in a hot tub, his face

a lightning rod for Moroccan hair. He told me, had we had

more time, our friendship could have blossomed

into something more beautiful. When he leaves forever,

he leaves it at that. All growth should be out through

the top of the head, not down through one’s soles.

*

Tonight, we all share our sweat and sloughed skin.

I borrow boxers and a T-shirt from a man

who shares a girl with another man. She kisses

them both, enunciates the word love like a annoyed sigh.

A fourth man holds a bottle of wine in one hand

and my hand in the other. Between gulps,

he tells me I am a lifesaver, tells us all about

the orphanage in Russia. One day, a bully pushed him

onto a bedpost and the metal spike punched out

a piece of his leg. He watched an attendant throw

his meat in the trash before helping him. I do not know

if he actually wants me to know this. It has been

less than a year since I’ve been around someone

on ecstasy, but that life feels too far away now.

We all have anxiety about work, the shifts we’ll start

in a few hours, but the hot tub was filled one bucket

at a time, and its spell breaks if we leave its circle.