Right back at him and whatever it was
went right through him, body and soul.
The feeling was a sensation of falling.
With the falling the dull pain, as always,
came back into his head and it was an
effort just to breathe. Lonigan walked
slowly, paused often, his father’s winter
dress coat flapping around his legs, his
fists pushed deep in its pockets.
He felt like a ghost in a dream, as the snow
swirled around him along the drifting streets,
a shadow on the loose with no one to claim
it. The days seemed a maze of make-believe
since his discharge. The shadows of his past
seemed dislocated from his present. The
present seemed a shadow of whatever
state-side was supposed to be. Shadows,
snow swirls, ghosts of dreams …
At the Celtic bar, Lonigan slipped in from
the cold. It was still early in the day and
the bar was all but empty – just a few other
jobless Joes sipping pints in the semi-dark,
everyone avoiding each other’s eyes.
“Any luck, lad?”
Tommy slid a pint in front of him as
Lonigan sat at his corner stool.
“Not this round, Thomas.”
Lonigan pulled the rumpled job section
from his suit coat’s pocket and laid it
across the bar.
“Then this rounds on me.”
Tommy tapped the mug.
Circles round no goes, words like loosing
lottery tickets, any AD a possible, every
life negotiable…
“I am a soldier of misfortune and”
Lonigan scribbled on the margin of the
newspaper, as he browsed through the help
wanted listings.
“I fought that holy war on the desert sand.”
He sipped his pint and searched his fate.
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