They are Nothing and Nothing Waits for Them

It's late and I am standing outside near Holly's car and the snow is coming down and she's telling me it's okay. I hug her. No. She hugs me.

We part and I get in my car. Drunk and with a chest full of gravel and loss.



We spent the evening in the bar and I laughed and I smiled and I spoke to people I had never known.

We spent the late evening in an apartment nearby. The walls were poorly painted orange and the springs in the couch were broken and pot smoke and cigarette smoke filled the room. Everyone spoke loud and laughed and were all only faces. All my age and nothing and I sat in a chair and I watched them pass the bowl around and draw nothing on brown paper and they all spoke about "When I get out of this place. When I get another job. When I get a car."

I was only a bad month away from being them. Alone and empty and drunk and holding onto miniscule hope for some rescue, any fucking rescue.

Anything.

The apartment was across the hall from the one you lived in when I met you and I choked on that every time I saw the tall windows, or the familiar base boards or when I left and I looked at your old door and I could almost see and I could almost see inside, a decade before. You in the kitchen, me trying to impress you. Us with nothing ahead and as I was leaving the weight grew in me until I was certain my ribs would crack apart and I would tumble down the staircase and then I'd never worry about any of this again.

Holly asks what's wrong and I fill her in and she tells me it's okay. It isn't. I lost that decade and I lost everyone in it and now I'm so close to being one of the six people living in that ruined fucking apartment, dreaming about things I have already had and longing for things that are never coming.

"They're nothing," I say. "They're nothing and nothing waits for them, and I'm just like them."

She's telling me it's okay. I hug her. No, she hugs me.

We part and I get in my car. Drunk with a chestful of gravel and loss.

The car is barely turned over before I give in and I can't breathe and I can't see and I can't think of anything else. My eyes burn. I inhale broken and heavy.

They are nothing and nothing waits for them,



and I am just like them.