on nights like this it's
old man Sanders across the hall
struggling with his sterility
and raising his wife's ******* son in silence
to be a man who will one day
manipulate a woman's emotions
in a train station at 4 a.m.

it's too early to be this drunk
yet i am
and
he is too
i can hear him shouting at
himself, his wife, and his half breed redheaded son
at the dinner table,
over something like Blondie in the background
and something about baseball in the morning.