Elbows propped on tabletops,
we roll out our worlds, like a red carpet,
across the surface between us.
Mapping out our weeks
we speak in riddles
only able to be understood by
present company and others with
an acute appreciation for the absurd.

Round 1
We begin by bouncing pleasantries
mingled with snark and
littered with nonsense stories
across the space where our scotch glasses
drain lazily between us.

Round 2
Brings with it a new tone-
we begin to slip into hypotheticals
and start the dangerous
and all too familiar process of
looking over our own shoulders.
The past seems to sneak
into the pauses and reminiscing starts
to seem too surreal to be appealing.

Round 3
And we are forced to keep reluctant company
with the regret that now speckles the tabletop in front of me.
Our eyes retreat from each other
as our  mouths start forming
around our greatest inadequacies.
Fear of the future,
we're petrified by the present.
We are forgetting how to be hesitant
as coping mechanics drift and split.

Round 4
**** starts to get real.
You try to be ambivalent.
And I just get angry.

Round 5
I am entertaining the possibility
of weeping publically.
(It's an unfortunate emotional default setting)

Round 6
We find our way back
to the familiar.
Accessing the damage
we joke to save face
while working to wind the loose ends
back together again
to stash them from where they came.
(But nothing ever fits back into its box as easily after its been unpacked)

Each week we try to be
each other's comfort zone
to crawl inside
to rest awhile.
But tonight we're too exhausted
and too self-absorbed
and too similar to get it right.
We'll try again next week,
on the next high-top next Wednesday night.