Your Friends Didn't Seem to Mind

Eventually you didn’t wander the streets at night. You didn’t look like some ghost inhabiting an Edward Hopper painting. You learned to live with not cracking wise to the other barstool holders. You learned again what the sun looks like when it cracks over the tree line on a summer morning.

After some more days passed—A series of them, counted one at a time--- you moved the barometer of a successful day from not drinking to actually getting something done, from feeling good in the morning from the absence of that persistent something, to feeling good at night because of the presence of a new something.

You started to clean up old messes. That bag you carried around, the one with all your fuckups in it, you started leaving it in strange places. There you were running back to whoever, frantically looking around to see if you’d dropped it. Eventually even that stopped, you left it on a train or in your seatback pocket or somewhere. For a couple days, sure, it seemed untoward not to have it, the sudden freedom causing you to bite your nails a bit more. That furrow in your brow was a little more prominent.

So you sat on the stone bench outside the coffee shop, as the sunset took longer and looked better than it ever had. You took that first sip from the mug, the one that shot you full of Everything Gonna Be Alright. Calm and excited at the same time. Real because you got there on your own. You struggled for a moment to remember what that bourbon you love looked like in the bottle, then let it go. It’s not important anymore.