“No one said the end would be pretty.”

I remember the old man in the hotel room

in Portland. He was just there, as if that

was where he was just waiting for the end.

I remember him because I don’t know why 

I’m still alive. I feel at any moment I could

be taken out like Lorca, shot, and thrown

into a ditch…that at any moment I’ll realize

any thought I had about my life was a lie,

an illusion, a shaggy dog story just coming

to its unsatisfactory conclusion. I never 

thought of myself as a coward until now.