The Bar on Beer Street and Gin Lane

They gather where the signs hang crooked, under gaslight glare and broken clocks, where the barkeep’s eyes are twin shot glasses— fogged, but watching. Gin Lane rolls in on tired boots, her laughter sharp as shattered glass. Beer Street hums a fatter tune, slumped in booths of sticky leather. They meet at the hinge of last call, where poetry is slurred and prophets mumble. A jukebox wails old revolutions to a crowd too drunk to notice. The walls are graffiti'd with regrets, phone numbers of ghosts, and chalked-up debts no one will ever pay. Outside, the world is coughing up history, but in here, time stirs with a muddler. The bar is a church with no god, only spirits, and the faithful who sip them. Some come to forget, others to remember louder. A woman in red sings with her back to the room. A man orders another round and trades his name for a tab. Everyone claps when the glass breaks. Midnight hits like a bottle to the head— the bouncer shrugs, Beer Street staggers, Gin Lane pirouettes into the dark.