A short excerpt from a new story…

It’s a pub in the classic sense.
Small and cramped,
Musty and dusty,
The air dense,
With stale ale,
And stale breath.

Every table and every chair,
Could tell enough tales,
To fill enough lifetimes,
Of every punter, with every stare,
In to the bottoms of their pint glasses.

And time passes.

Time passes and some things remain.
The men sat at the bar,
Have been there for a while,
And I don’t just mean today.
But disturbing the shadows of the present,
And memories of the past,
The Whiz Kid and X enter,
Bringing with them a blast,
Of crisp saltiness from the outside,
And of the awkward tension of their walk,
Which passed without word.
But, in truth, no one needs to have heard,
A conversation between the two,
To see it’s explicit,
That they’re now complicit,
In whichever path the other is about to choose.

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