The Writer

I look for illumination, enlightenment, words as clear and sharp as a city-less winter night. I find only the wooden stump of a leg, Jack’s, at the bar again resting on a stool with the medal tacked to it, the one he won in the war. “Win that before Or after you fell off your Daddy’s tractor, Jack?” from the stalls in the back. Jack pats it and rubs the medal looking for a stranger to tell him his story. This is it then- the neon reflections, the lies-his, theirs, mine- of a carefully carried past.