PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEAT

Can I skip this part?

It’s a small circle tonight. The basement holds lingering dampness. The slippery metal chairs, foldable skeletons, don’t help with staying warm or comfortable. The coffee is oddly good. The doughnuts are stale, and Mike is sharing.

I can see it in their eyes.  It’s on their breath, in their voices.  They are who they are, but they just haven’t accepted it.  That’s what brings the loneliness.  The detachment.

Pack animals, all. And I am one, too.

I feel like I’m swimming in the wrong moment, in the wrong current. I’m here.  I listen to the clock tick.  And all I hear is the awful thickness of it all.  Thwack, thud. Repeat. But by the time I realize it, I’m past that moment, chasing the next.  I’m on the bus watching you and you and you on a rainy corner shaking your watches, wondering what the fuck is up with all this.  But you don’t know—I don’t know.  Sitting in the now feels as if I missed tomorrow.  Recognition and awareness bring isolation and clarity. I am fucking exhausted.

What do I have to feel to be one of them?  Good or bad makes no difference.  I just want to feel something.  I want to feel here.  Found.

On the way out, I pause for a smoke. And I take a drag off my flask, too. I say a quick prayer for Mike as I limp into the darkness, St. Luke’s fading into the night behind me. I can smell the mud.

There’s a reason they never fold up those awful chairs.

And we always sit in the same one, as if it is assigned.