The Bar on the Other Side

Brooks sat at the bar drinking gin, his hat atop the stool beside him. A piece of paper and a pen lay next to his ghostly glass of half-drunk spirit, and his itchy fingers tapped the sticky bar top as he questioned, ink or alcohol? 

Brooks began to write to her, the words he wanted her breaking heart to know:

The demons trick all of us. They tricked me into coming here; the space we’re drawn to behind the smoke and mirrors; to escape feeling abandoned by life. Yet, there’s nothing here but more lost gin, no sign of the mother ship meant to guide our troubled souls home.

I think about you all the time. I watch you from above, from the side lines, from in front of your camera lens. That wisp of a breeze you feel brush your hand at night? That’s me, making sure you’re safe. How I wish I could kiss your forehead… 

Don’t you hear me? Calling out to you?

My spurs jangle as I trail your shadow and gaze around your silhouette, hoping you might catch a feeling of my heart that no one saw except you. I never did know why you stayed with me; you deserved a man with bigger hands, a cleaner soul and stronger shoulders than mine. You needed an unfaltering fire not a flickering flame easily snuffed. My left hand was all yours, but my right held a gun. I stared down its barrel without fuss or farewells to free myself, to free you of my chains, so you could take your talent and neon love to the edge without my weight attached to your ankle – but, man, I miss you. I love you, and it pains me I didn’t have the courage to thread the streets to you one more time. 

How can I forget you? I can’t. I can’t forget Parisian moonlight, or how my eyes bored headlong into yours and never returned to a view without you in its frame.

It is said true love is eternal, I can vouch for that: it is.

One day in a different world, not too far from where you are, you will find me again – I will find you again – and in twain we shall voyage the infinite as one.

©annaliesemorgan2022