Hard Decisions By Tobi Alfier

Stuck at the crossing of another glass of red and time to go, he weighs his options even while signaling the barmaid for another. Not a tough choice for him, she’ll be righteous and pissed-off at home no matter what. Thinks she keeps it to herself but he can tell.

The barmaid brings him a boilermaker instead of merlot. What the hell, the sound of glass clunking glass is nostalgic, like when he used to run across the gravel lots down by the water, toward or away from someone, the crunch that said you’re almost there, keep going.

The crunch like ice in a tall glass of rum and coke, drink of choice for the steal booze from your parents set. They never noticed even as the levels went down, down, down like Alice down the rabbit hole. How some people survived is something he’ll never understand, though he knows he barely made it himself.

Those gravel lots are now stacks of soulless condos and he’s a fugitive in a soulless life, one he would never admit to. His nerves strung tight as new fenceline over acres, insomnia full of guilt and smalltime phantoms—but it’s all her fault, or so he claims. The words she spoke to him so sweetly now beyond remembering. He thinks of her silence as doing him wrong.

He signals for another, then his time is up. He moves toward the door with something less than grace, a country-western song on the jukebox singing him goodbye. Tomorrow he’ll play their first dance if he can remember it. If he has to ask, her eyes may look away and never look back.

Tobi Alfier is published nationally and internationally. Credits include War, Literature and the Arts, The American Journal of Poetry, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Washington Square Review, Cholla Needles, James Dickey Review, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Arkansas Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others.  She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).