Member-only story
I’m Back
A return home to my favorite bar
Been a few years since I sat bar with the pewter cups over the Don Julio. It’s Friday, made of green leaves and wet soil, checkered floors and a white-haired man in
a bomber jacket. The bartender hovers and scratches his back. Half the bar is blue, half is gray, a spectrum from depression to angst, and Kendrick’s in
my ear, and the bathroom where I snorted cocaine with the stall door open. I am between the leaves of a notebook. Ink has dried into a blot. I decipher
meaning from these full circles. As long as I can remember, I have been outside them, then I came to their starting place to anoint them. Dots exist here, and people are the same, right
where I left them. Different people, but they are the same, different atoms, but they are the same. Seated on stools with darting eyes, transient fingers, hands that work
to convince eyes of different feelings. What we find pleasing to the touch and appealing to the eye are so rarely the same. The pour is strong. I sip slowly. It’s that time of year when
State Street removes her jacket. The flowers gain confidence and the comics fill the basement next door and the kids are back in school and the sky goes
half sherbet. I’m a little sick and my dog is home waiting for me with a tail like a broken fuel gauge, and when I step through the door I will be everything.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
