TE22 Potpourri

Ángelo Néstore

Impure Acts

When I Picked the Wrong Bar

And like the arsonist who prepares to burn the bridges, searching for some peace, I rearrange the furniture of my home once more.

I’m that type of friend, always ordering another round in bars. I have no children, am the only son of a long line of bastards who eat their fill and self-destruct.

My friends, however, are fathers, the kind that hunt for any excuse to come home late, they always stand me another drink, never want me to go. They look at me and a hundred times they tell me how hard it is, how lucky I am. They don’t see the ants climbing up my leg, they don’t see them. They drink time with their fatherly mouths, they swallow time with their fatherly saliva, and every day I become increasingly smaller and their children increasingly bigger. And at forty, at fifty, I’ll return to the same corner bar and then those who are kids today will wonder why 205

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