To sleep

I crawled under the piano, the disassembled cushions from various couches supporting my thin body. Around me, like cut down soldiers, the sleeping men littered the room. An hour earlier we were howling—the floor our drum, a guitar, the piano: our voices filling the space with our inner torments, our love, and our mysteries.

We sang for the women who never loved us, we sang for our mothers, we sang for our futures. Our voices were loud, strong, and bold; while our hearts leaked torment into the choruses. What we believed was buried deep in our cores—it showed itself. It changed our voices. It made us men.

They stunk of wine, whiskey, and beer and settled quickly. The piano loomed above me—a black hole. I thought of home, my bed, my dog. It’s been a year. Home used to be hours away, now its days. For weeks I’ve wiped the sleep from my eyes only to wonder where they will close again.

In Aberdeen it was the roof of a man whose hair would fall out, grow back, and then fall again—for no good reason.

London, the Goldman Sachs banker; In Amsterdam, the two who had infinite freedom.

Stockholm, the couple who made their own jackets, the beautiful German girl who found me a last minute place in a college dorm party room, the hostel on a boat that rocked me to sleep, and now….

And now my body settled into the cushions beneath the piano of an opera singer and his friends after a night of joy and sorrow.