We drank beers and
ate sausages
and sat and talked
normal and then not normal.
Tears appeared reluctant,
and his eyes reddened
and his lips had there own force
that pushed beyond the
dreaded weight of memory.
He was eight, he said,
with a trembling fear that came from
the child still resident in his head.
He was eight when the serpent
opened his innocent eyes.
He kept talking and talking,
slowly at first and then with urgency,
for he had never spoken of it in 30 years.
It happened!
It happened!
He shouted as if to convince
me or him or someone
from a past that refused
to become just shadows in the mind.
It happened in the bedroom,
dark and quiet,
among his toys,
and on his bed,
on his safe
and warm bed.
He recalled the room and the deed
as dark as the night,
as singular as the perpetrator
who found his target
among his trusted friends.
He drank his beers
and the tears, that would
not stop, kept rolling
and rolling and his voice
was failing in the recollection
that spat out like poison.
When the tears dried
and the beers were drank
and the night grew old,
and found its awkward edge,
he stopped and looked at me,
and I knew just then that
I could no longer
be his friend.
4/9/2017