I’m pretty good at pretending it doesn’t matter but matter it does. And matter is. And we’re all so skilled at deciding how it all fits together. And it doesn’t fit together mostly but that doesn’t stop us pretending we think we know. And pretending we think we know is basically the root of all this culture. And I quit pretending then I start again then I quit again in order to start. You could shout out to the gathered crowd some type of thing and they’d ignore you. You could shout something else and they’d say hello, they’d do that throaty laugh that comes out of them at certain moments when you really know you’ve made an impact, when you really know you’ve hit true. Suddenly it smells like wet rocks in here. It smells like lies in a riverbed. It smells like the drought you left your mother. I wrote down my entire life. I turned all these feelings into words that turn back into feelings when presented to you. The bar picks up with the scent of you. The crowd comes and goes like the sea, like weeds. I’m sorry to say but I am dreaming of the soft clench of you. I am thinking, just thinking, about a time alone together in the dark. Tomorrow I will be born new again and I will attempt something I’ve never done before. That’s how Fridays go. That’s a whole new world to speak to. That’s the dark of the bar, that’s the small slide towards something else, something else. The riverbed dries out. The night goes even darker. You can say yes, you can say no, you can say. You do.