The four of them go back years,
so she knows how to get out of bed
without waking them up.

She’s been here
so many times that she knows how
to have a different thought for each sliver
of early-morning light that comes through
the aluminum foil curtains in the bedroom.

Hiding out
for as long as hours at a time
ain’t what it used to be.

Someone mixes a bottle of the good stuff
in the living room with a bottle
of the cheap stuff from the kitchen,
and something awful is bound to happen.

It was Tuesday night when they got together,
and she had planned to be out by morning
with enough pictures to ruin all three of them.

Being old friends was easier a decade ago.
Teenagers have absolutely no concept of time.

Thursday morning is taking forever to get started.
She slips on a silk robe that’s inappropriate
even by battered starlet standards and makes her way
through the slim hallway to the kitchen.

Inside the walls
rats fight for control of an empire composed entirely
of sight unseen. The photographs and paintings,
some of the warm figures are strangers,
some of the drawings are a mess,
follow every step of her calculated walk
and dread having to stay still for so long.

She gets a can of lighter fluid from the pantry
and sets it down on the table. Good things come
to those who laugh instead of wait.

While making coffee
she finds herself helpless to do anything but remember
what it felt like to have a woman’s hand wrench
the back of her hair. Meanwhile a different set of hands
grabbed her waist from behind and a third rough pair
drooled whiskey, laughed and slapped her lower back.

It was a moment of shocking, shameful beauty
for every hour in which things got worse from there.

Sometimes everything gets out of hand
and creates a paper trail that could shut down a country.

It was supposed to be simple
with only a minimum gratuity for humiliation.

Tonight the neon street signs will bounce
their welcomes off the neon from the bars and hotels,
and every last word on the scene is going to be
in a foreign language.

Here’s to new beginnings.

She pours the coffee and then pours the lighter fluid
around the floor until the can is a hollow witness.

When she lights a cigarette
she knows exactly what to do with that book of matches.

No one wakes up. No one is going to try and explain
just what in the hell happened. She puts on a pair of slippers,
gets in her car outside and drives off before the neighbors
suspect a thing.

It didn’t go exactly as planned,
but from either end a bridge is still going to burn
if your intentions are pure enough.

01/04/2011

Posted on 01/04/2011
Copyright © 2025 Gabriel Ricard