It's my birthday today i'm gonna do what i want gonna spend it with strangers in picton see the sights, the smells the citizens of the sounds but mainly spend 5+ hours in Le Café, I've got till 2am to kill to catch my boat, so I'll try to commit to my book and call my parents but i just can't help myself, I've got to befriend all the staff, and now where at the irish bar and i go up to the covers guy and i ask him can i play a song to your crowd tonight? he says nah and i say allgoods so i make my way back to my new friend Maya and try to share some space to connect and banter, and hopefully we'll end the night as friends, on instagram and then we're held social hostage by a dude with the world's coldest open. He says he's got three months to live, isn't he lucky that he doesn't have kids? and only the silliest of phrases can slide out my mouth "mate are you alright?" he says "I WANNA FEEL MY TEETH ON CONCRETE AND THE WORLD TO SWALLOW ME WHOLE, AND WHEN I FEEL FLIGHT FROM FIFTEEN STORIES, NO ONE IN THE WORLD COULD RECOGNIZE WHAT THAT MESS ONCE WAS AND NO AMOUNT OF COKE COULD WASH AWAY MY STAIN" well that's a lot to take in mate, I'm not equipped for this tonight, could we rewind back to when i was just a stranger and not the only therapist in sight. and then he does one of those really uncomfortable laughs You know the kind that goes a bit too long and a bit too hard, but what's worse is when he stops, he's lost looking past the blankness on the wall he's cold and grey and still, and now i notice a single tear, rolling down, the surface of its paper and Maya says "Maybe we could go outside and get some fresh air for the rest of the evening" and so we do that and we hide out from the parasol out from the rain and then he exclaims that "the best song of all time is no quarter by Led Zeppelin" and i don't have the heart to tell a dying man he's wrong, it's obviously "where is the love" by the Black Eyed Peas and in the middle of his own explanation, he interrupts himself and asks me simply if I'm happy and I say "I'm pretty good considering, it's my birthday day today" He gifts me a cigarette and doesn't say goodbye I call out to him "mate are you alright... to get home?" he doesn't turn around, only walks into the night singing "well mate does it even matter anymore?"

I find myself at the terminal and i know as soon as i board that boat that my body will fall asleep as soon as it finds those seats, comfortable but every detail that i've changed to fit a story better drips away his existence and it brings his grounding ever closer and all that's left is the outline of someone made, fictitious do I have a right to script his switch and make this man "this man" at all? cos if i do, that's all he'll be to you and that's all i've let him be no more revisions now it might ruin his story and he looks a lot like you and all your family it wouldn't be remiss to check your obituaries on april 6th

ditto