Nothing’s so revealing as the doorway of a corner bar. Step inside a flame, take refuge in a campfire’s pulse, become a point of light within a point of light Shot of whiskey and a dollar beer, please! Same for me, thanks. Every candle in this constellation glows with longing and forgotten fury Your turn to pay, my friend! Put it on my tab. Hey, haven’t we seen that guy somewhere before? A few minutes ago, in fact? The bar we were just at? How the fuck’d he get over here so fast? Each stranger bears a jack-o-lantern grin, the charred remains of lonely worlds within. Well, in any case, it doesn’t matter. He’s gone now, look, he’s fuckin gone now, man! The fuck? I didn’t even see him leave— Why do you care anyway? Man, you gay for this guy or what? jk. lol, you know I ain’t that way. Drink up, they’re closing soon. A round for me and my awkward friend! Thanks. A round for disappearing strangers! Dude— For every disillusioned face in every floating glass! For every ass on every barstool, every hulking shadow, every husband, every wife, every girl, every squirrel, every youngster trying to act old, every old man trying to remember being bold, for every— Dude— For everyone who’s here, now, just because you’re here, now, sitting in proximity. For who you were the last time you were here! For who you’ll never get to be! For all the other versions of yourself—the best, the worst, the ones who’ve sat here basking in this heartsick glow and didn’t know this house would someday melt into a shifting sea, nor quite how faded into mist that sea would one day come to be. Are we still here? What? Still here? Then drink another. Why are we still here? Don’t we have important things to do? Shouldn’t we be chasing down the sunset, yanking down the drapery whose faded threads obscure the searing heat of night’s eternal gold, that we might cadge a flame, a single drop of fire to kiss the fancy of a nation, setting off a world-destroying conflagration? Dude. What? Thanks for the drink. No problem, man.