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Nov 2016
Gamble -a risky action undertaken with the hope of success.

Derived from the 18th century English word gamel, meaning to pay games.


Remember the players we left behind…
The strangers who you held one night friendships with on evenings where the sun refused to shine.
Remember the fairy lights. Remember the benches outside of Bodega and the smuggled bottles of wine. People seem so much more friendly when they drink.
But hey, if it takes a glass of poison to make us all less toxic then we can pass out happy…
We’ll creep out of sobrieties bed knowing it’ll be the angriest alarm we wake to as the sun tries to steal 5 of our 40 winks the next morning.
But you know.. Gotta risk it for a chocolate biscuit.
I’ll trade in sleep at the chance I’ll be dealt a more interesting night. Break ice with strangers at hope we both share a bit of over lives.
Trying to to create a story worth telling is a gamble.

And I feel sorry for people who fall asleep at half 11. Seems like such a wasted day.
Like if life composed of options and outcomes there must be a better way. I slay the idea that each night we have 8 hours of sleep debt to pay. Because in those wee hours of the morning, those are when demons make music videos, those are when normally vacant balconies play host to the half drunk couples finding comfort in each others bodies. That’s when the parties get quiet. When the humans have intoxicated themselves into lullabys and start softly singing their lives into the ears of a friend willing to listen and I will bet you have something I wanna hear, and I bet I'll have soemthing to give back, and while you and I are here we'll keep betting. Each syllable is a chip on the table. Each sentace is an opportunity to double down. The bar will not close, the roullette will keep spinning and we'll grow a little ritcher with every new story we share.

I make bets with time and breath.
And if you spend time with me then you will to. You the few who have paid you admission fee into my conciousness. You who throw dice with me on the empty streets where street lamps themselves begin to sleep. You who I will one day come to love.
It's risky. Risky like petting stray dogs. Risky like telling your loved ones that you've been seeing demons in the mirror. Risky like getting one knee and offering your life to someone. It is risky.... but that's fine.
I will teach you how to gamble.
Robbert van Dongen
Written by
Robbert van Dongen  Nottingham
(Nottingham)   
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