Pals

Their faces are still there; caricatures and cameos, grinning mugs and jug ears. Cheering, jeering chums that would phone at four in the morning to garble drunken thoughts, make momentous plans, or borrow ten quid. The oddball humorist and part-time suicide, the drama queen contesting her own shadow, the poet who never wrote a poem. The mon ami and mon amie that drank for you when you could drink no more. Long after the late-night bus rides, I see their features pressed against softly glowing windows, as London transports them even to far off Ohio; their lips silently mouthing – a last goodbye or maybe just trying to cadge another tenner.