The Night Watchman

the joint was cold, but it pulled you in anyway, like a half-frozen bottle of muscatel somebody forgot on the windowsill in December – cheap, sticky, promising nothing but a headache and a warm gut for ten minutes.

she lay there beside me, panting like a dying dog during the worst heatwave, that wet rattle in her chest, cold and inviting the way only a broke-down angel can be after screwing every sad bastard in the city and still coming up short on the rent.

the room stank of unhappiness and self-pity, thicker than the smoke curling off the ashtray, thicker than the sour crust of old come baked into the sheets. I just stared up at the ceiling, cracks running through the plaster like veins in an old drunk’s nose, listening to her snore. that snore, Christ, it was almost sweet, steady, unstoppable, like some broken jukebox in a skid-row bar that only knows one cracked tune and keeps grinding it out till the power dies.

no bottle on the nightstand.

no warm beer sweating in the corner. nothing but the stink leaking from under the kitchen door—rotting onions, piss, the shadows of every bad choice I ever made. and then the market fires went out. just like that. one by one. the whole rotten performance packing up its tents in the middle of the night, leaving me here with a dead whore’s breath on my neck and the landlord knocking tomorrow.

hell of a life.

pour me another,
let it caress my tired soul,
waiting for the punch