Some unions are better off retired than reunited.

We had spoken over whiskeys

of one anothers tlife ragedies

and you, just like old times

always had a punchline

for every poignant moment.

And with every joke the burden of

the weight being carried by my heart

shifted to my head,

for the brain is better equipted to

deal with the reality of an asshole

when given half a chance.

And you joked about how still having

the capacity to

recall and share memories

made you feel so damn cool

while sitting half-baked in that catering hall

full of hormone injected housewives,

opiateted orthodontists and honors class overachievers

now with the onset of early alzheimer.

You told me that your kids

were all grown up and fucked up

and I laughed and said, we’ll whose aren’t anyhow.

While all the while feeling lucky that somehow mine

had turned out relatively alright.

You had said that your 2nd wife had been

a more loving wife than your 3rd but stability

was something that at our age was more important to

you than love.

And when you kept saying over and over

how amazing you thought it was

that everyone, after all these years,

still looked so damn good,

I began to grow a bit skeptical

about that pill that you had offered to me,

the one that you said that your brother in-law

from your 1st wife

had prescribed for your bad back.

And later on, after dumping you in the back

of an Uber at the end of the night

and while trying to buckle you in

for the drivers safety,

you sprayed me with your spittle

while babbling on about staying in touch and

that yes, I of course love you too man,

and yeah it was all good

and we fist bumped and high fived

as I was sober enough to tell the Uber driver

that he was better off taking it slow

in the curves,

and knowing that at our age

that this expression of bro’hood,

one that hadn’t even been there in High School,

was now just the drunken melodrama

and nostalgia of a middle age man

who had gotten

once again

way too

high.