colin rides the R train by John Grochalski

colin rides the R train
with his son, who has to be twelve now
i try to avoid him in the neighborhood
since the old drunk at the bar days
but even new york city is sometimes too small
and then there’s colin on the street
colin in the grocery
colin riding the R train with his son
we don’t have much to say
most of our talk back then
was drunken gibberish about books
colin looks too sober now to discuss anything but rent
he says he doesn’t even go to the bar
on the weekends now
he rolls his eyes and motions toward his kid
who looks bored looking out
at the graffiti on the subway tunnel walls
back in the day, colin had a bar schedule
every week day from six to seven
and then from four to five on the weekends
he used to send text messages
to the sexy bartender who liked to fuck her boyfriend
on the men’s room sink
but that was back when his son was a baby
then one day colin’s wife said,
no kid wants to smell beer on their daddy’s breath
and he was reduced to weekends only
a few beers on the couch
then nothing
i don’t know what colin does for kicks now
hangs in his man cave looking at his old cds and guitars
extolls the virtues of sobriety to his face in the morning mirror
loiters outside the bar window
wishing that he was someone else
spends as much time as he can with his son
truth be told, i don’t even go to the bar
as you get older you get sick of things
i wonder what colin is sick of these days
what books he’s read
but suddenly he says, this is our stop
and he and his kid get up and leave
even though i know that it isn’t their stop
and it hits me that maybe colin has been
trying to avoid me in the neighborhood too
turning down the block when he sees me
avoiding the grocery store
maybe i remind him of something he’d rather forget
like the past
like the good old days
of hangovers and hell
or maybe he just always thought that i was an asshole too
and there was no one else in the bar to talk to
and that colin was just too lazy back then
like i was
to get up
grab his beer
and move his seat.



John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and the forthcoming The Philosophers’ Ship (WineDrunk Press, 2018) He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.