With Gusto

Wash-Out

Bradley a young sixteen year old had a guitar
on his lap high up in the stool next to the bar.
Bradey said it was easy, to pluck and shuffle
on the piece of junk. He knocked the yellow body
with a black tear like a drum. He always tried to teach
me something on his way up. The night before yesterday, before
his bachelor's night: An afternoon without champagne.
We moved right into what younger people drink, I being
pulled by a youth I'd never been a part of. The wedding
the next night, reception at the community hall.
Half-filled glasses lay peppered on long tables covered in paper.
The dance floor post hop, Brad's friends stealing the show:
Jerry shouting, Bottoms up to the crew, responsible
in their tuxedos -- college boys jumping around
like party tricks. Steve (huffing over his failures
in love) kicked at a wall, the way girls used to abuse
my shin. And my son with Jeanie, my new daughter,
already looking bored. Brad pointed at the DJ's
shoddy equipment and made spiral gestures with one hand
and mouse clicks with the other. On my chair against the wall,
I was bizarrely happy amidst the constructed, dwindling night.
That space where it doesn't matter if you leave or stay.