Image by Christine Renney
Can alcohol still take hold? Get inside and make its demands? Or am I too full of holes and will it seep through the scars?
I have separated the can from its companions, freed it from the plastic ring and set it down in front of where I am sitting. Leaning back I stretch my legs out across the pavement and I can’t reach the can between my feet.
The others, the passers by, are forced to step over me and many of them glare angrily and I am glad of it. I don’t want some good Samaritan crouching down beside me. But if I sit here for long enough and drink myself into a stupor I know, of course, that this will happen.
What I want is for one of them to knock the can over and I don’t care if it is intentional or not, as long as I can watch the lager pool onto the pavement, the damp patch spreading between my legs and soaking into my trousers.
But despite their impatience and the scowls, the passers by are graceful, balletic even, and they don’t touch me and they don’t knock the can.
If I were to draw in my legs and reach out, snatch the can and drink from it would I feel it? Can I still know it? Can a ghost carry that conflict and walk with it?
The Brokedown Pamphlet 
I like how this is full of conflict, Mark: the glaring yet graceful passers by, the promise of alcohol’s release and its impotence and the want to be clean yet desiring the addiction. Very much a comment on wider life, I feel.
Absolutely Chris. And thank you so much.
I love reading your works. They flow easily and still hold much content. Thank you. Mark
Thank you so much.
I love your words. I am glad I have found them and you. I do find some comfort in writing with the ink of a ghost, letters still unpublished…
It certainly does free up the pen to trace the shifting footsteps of the unreliable narrator. Thank you for your words – I am glad to have found you work too and looking forward to reading more.