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Description
I used to head down
to the pub on main.

We'd meet up; we'd watch
the game through
the snow on the screen.
Decipher lisped play-by-plays
and sometimes, decipher wrong.

As I swished the ale around
my sweating glass, he'd walk in.

5:22 p.m -- his late-at-night;
eyes half alive and his life, half dead.

A shuffled symphony,
while finding his never-usual seat.
Skyscrapers douse
his shoulders with doubt
as the news manages to cut in.

There, he'd order his usual;
whiskey, its warmth, a foil
to his lethargy.

Despite seeing him
on all the occasions of my visits,
I observe him;
each time he arrives,
in between football plays
and dismal economic forecasts.

Anxiety dissolves into drunken smiles,
as he sips on, two, three, eight glasses.
One is never enough.

Fingers drowning
as they lurch
along the moist bar,
hoping to get just another shot.

"I think I have to cut you off."
I don't think any insult
or instigation
could enrage him any more quickly.

Tonight, I am his personal usher
because he says he can't handle
how the floor lurches underfoot.

Muddled arms create a
vice grip on my shoulder:
I become a slurred confidant.

Groggy lisps drain from his lips
faster than he downed each glass,
"I love her more than she ever loved me."

"Isn't that how it normally goes,"
I say, humouring him
best I can.

When the taxi arrives,
I help him into it
and watch it drive away;
I can't help but wonder
just who he's coming home to--
if anyone at all.