2
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.