A Bartender's Gift

“Do I have a story for you!”

he announced, slumped at my bar,

his eyes like dusty relics, tired

and glassed over, grating with

regret. Beer foam sloshing, he

started recounting; the lies came

easy to him, truths coughed up

like bar peanuts, salted memories

shared in an uneven cadence.

His voice quivered, cracked like

the jukebox playing old country.

Lost love, wasted years, he strung

tales together, a necklace of mishaps,

cheap trysts, drunken confessions.

I poured him another, nodded in

the right places, my own heart

awake to the sameness of it,

the cruel repetition of sorrow.

All around, the regulars babbled,

their laughter echoing glass shards,

their tales in fragments, ground

into nightly rituals of loser’s luck.

He droned on, a sad preacher

without a pulpit, wishing for answers,

finding none. Cigarette smoke coiled,

the room grew thick with a collective

shared exhaustion.

In the end, stories just dissolve,

down the drain with spilt beer,

smeared across counter-tops, forever

left unanswered. I listened, caught 

his final words in a net of boredom,

a bartender’s eternal gift, that quiet

understanding that maybe,

just maybe, we’re all making up 

the same damn thing.