...

Call comes at bar close. Her voice swollen with drink, looking for another place to go. Listen to the rambling as a scream builds deep down. Manage a fairly polite declination to entertain amidst mild verbal abuse. It's right back to that first apartment when the drunken call comes and other whisky swollen voice curses from the other end. A shriveled meat pump labors in a cage of bone and blood. Pieces of a life long left behind lodged into the cracks leak poison. Years long it creeps, waiting to spring out and scream "REMEMBER!" at the slightest provocation. There is no trust, no warm embrace to take the edge off the days labors. There is good built into these hands though. They make things, beautiful things. There is dirt beneath their nails and thick calluses. There is solace in that.