Gentlemen

I slapped myself in the face three times before I turned the key. The engine chugged and turned over. My knees were shaking with what you had just told me. I used to take the train to Boston, I used to live in Lowell. I wasn't afraid of anything, not the Future Barbershop, or walking through Haymarket Square, and yet I am entirely unequipped to deal with this. So when you ask me if I know what it's like, I don't. All I can muster is a half sincere, "It's going to be alright," and use the foggy mental compass in my head to get us home safely.

It's a stigma that has been built in my brain since day one. We're walking under a bridge with your hand at the nape of my neck. I should be mad, or scared, or something but we have a bottle in our hands and your expression is all business. My heads swimming and I'm watching you spiral. There is hissing coming from an empty truck bed. I think we're just looking for trouble. Waiting for it, just to see if we would know what do with it if it hit us.

And then I'm trying to see out the window but I have to keep wiping the tears from my eyes. My stomach is turning over, my lungs are inhaling and exhaling. You're still warm, but loosing it, spilling your guts, "Do you know what it's like?"

I don't.

If we had known that an hour later we would be in the grocery section of a Walmart, accomplices, acting belligerant, laughing, maybe we would have cut to the chase. We're in it together after all: alone in some state, miles and miles away from our rightful homes. You're not supposed to forget things like this.