Part Five

I got paid.

Yeah, after a hard days work I head back to the Madison Avenue Starbucks. While I'm making my coffee, my brother enters in and tells me that he has to talk to me. We settle down at a table and he tells me the bad news. A close friend and poet that we know has died. She expired several months after her husband died. One nearly after the other. Both of cancer.

I sit stunned. I am too shocked to utter a word.

We grouse over her death. Back and forth, nearly arguing amongst each other about her demise and how it came about. She was just so amazingly healthy and vibrant that death should have been something not even thought of at this time of her life. And yet, the same villain that had claimed her husband's life, returned to do the same to her.

We both deal with sadness in different ways, my brother and I. I have my way, which is to sublimate, and then coat it with distractions. Like a clam would do a grain of sand, creating a pearl of memories inside instead.

We parted ways, he downtown on foot; me, downtown by train. I made it to the Box with my bag and began packing once more. This time, this bag got filled in seconds. I stuffed it and stuffed it, until it could take no more, and I still had clothing left. I pushed and packed and stuffed and moved. I opened up my storage compartment underneath the bed, and my locker, and filled everything, and still had more stuff to pack. I began throwing out extemporaneous shit, and still I had more to put away.

In the end, I had to use the bag that the tote bag came in to put away shoes, a hoodie and my blanket. Now I wish I got ANOTHER bag. But that's alright. Now I know. I'll need three. Or dispose of everything. Because if I'm kicked out of this SRO ever, and re-enter the streets, all of this shit will be jettisoned. Do not fall in love with your shit because you can lose all of it. All of it.

Now I sit on the edge of my bed. Word is from one of the Techs that a van is coming tomorrow to pick us up and take us the fuck out of here and uptown. A van. Now that was something that I did not think that they would do here. I thought it would be the train out of here.

But out of here it is.

I retire, because I want this night to end and a new day to begin.

Hobobob