At Least They're Committed

He’s sitting on the front porch with me, in the green folding chair. I’m in the red. I sneaked us out a couple of Hoss beers from the cooler as the men inside swear at the refs who have made “fucking moronic calls” against the Denver Broncos. He takes a swig and rests the bottle in both hands on his flat stomach. He’s more stretched than sitting, actually. His legs straight, he’s wearing cowboy boots and jeans and a white, gauze shirt. He’s not saying anything, he stares into the darkness beyond the railing and takes another drink.

I don’t have to tell him I’m tormented. I don’t have to tell him I want to go home. I don’t have to tell him I cry in the bathroom sometimes or that I’m so stressed and insecure and lonely that I’ve grown paranoid. I don’t have to tell him that it’s getting more and more difficult to be surrounded by elements eager to discredit me or that my friends are far away and there’s a darkness that hangs over and around me and my every attempt to heal it is rebuffed and met with scorn.

I don’t have to tell him that there’s nothing on my ‘futures’ wall because I have no future or that I got my truck back empty of gas again or that I don’t remember my dreams but I do remember they’re filled with angst or that I took too many Tylenol PM because I need to escape for just a little while.

I don’t have to tell him because he knows and he’s swilling beer and staring into the darkness while sitting with me in the light and he doesn’t say a thing because he doesn’t have to and neither do I. He’s   . . . here.