Speak-Easy

SPEAK-EASY

I said “hello.” It barely came out as a resounding mellow.

I felt so nervous. I felt like Carrey’s character in “I love You Phillip Morris.”

I was me, that was never enough.

He sat alone until I came along. He sat so tough.

He was adamant on playing with his plate of cruciferous nutrition.

I was adamant on avoiding lack of verbal fruition.

I was no longer nervous. In its place sat something suspicious.

Something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was sure he wasn’t malicious.

He sat with no posture. He sat with a half-empty veggie bowl and his second or third lager.

“Where are you from?” eventually came out after sitting for an hour.

The easiest of my questioning, the ugliest received.

A raised eyebrow, a long sip of his lager. He turned to speak, he made it seem easy.

Everything out of his mouth seemed so easy-breezy.

I sat and waited for his liquid to go down. He no longer looked at me. I was full of remorse.

“Everywhere,” he answered. He was finally uneasy. I had to conjure another topic of discourse.

I could no longer withstand his unseen meditation.

“What beer is that?” I asked without mental hesitation.

He went into a five-minute answer. He was full of detail for a bottle promising numbing sanitation.

I didn’t care for beer or any of its derivatives, and yet I listened to his voice, I listened full of interest.

I didn’t care what this could mean. I knew the red signs. I knew that drink was his nightly mistress.

I didn’t care for the warning, there was so much more.

That’s what I told myself, I was relentless in my quest to his core.

He continued to speak so easy. He described everything from its distillery to the bottled home.

He continued to speak with a devoted flow. A sloppy but lively flow.

I needed someone to serve as my tow.

The love he felt for this liquid courage.

I should have told myself to be discouraged.

Instead I sat full of interest. I sat and listened to his tales of city nightlife with pals, humans and lagers.

Instead I ignored his continued warnings. It was easier than allowing him to become my mental flogger.

Instead I relied on his speaking. Making my verbal scramble less and less displeasing.

Instead I thought less of what to say.

Instead I sat and looked at his face full of cynical display.

He drank and spoke of good times. He drank and addressed me while looking high as a kite.

High on life? High on his fight.

He was winning the struggle to avoid what made me unable to speak.

He felt little to nothing. He felt a peace at the peak.

He was winning at being the one to speak easy.

I was losing my battle at being me without the escape.

I was trying so hard to make words, anything that would make me seem less and less on rebate.

He drank again. He drank not to binge.

His binge was internal. This was his hinge.

He could speak easy, because he no longer felt the weight of the displeasing.

To him, it was one delayed releasing.

To me, he was appealing for saying too much. Too much of what others would find an instructional deal-breaker.

To me, he was my lost cause to cater.

To me, this is what being with him entailed.

To me, his being was a speak-easy.

What he was I knew was not easy.

Frail.

Broken.

Full of repent.

Afraid to begin.

I couldn’t speak for fear to descend.

Further than to speak had to offer.

Further than what those looking eyes could ever offer.

A hand.

An arm.

My torso.

My whole being.

What he wanted, he could never speak easy.

In the past I was told, what I wanted was not something many said easy.

Instead there we were.

Without a proper prose.

To speak for its sake would feel so gross.

Instead he sat with a new lager.

I sat like a wordless blogger.

We looked at everything around us. We looked at one another, wordlessness was rampant.

No longer a chance to sound vapid.

To speak-easy, was no longer his default.

To speak-easy, was no longer the barrier between us.