A girl walks into a bar. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke and maybe it is. But it doesn’t feel funny. She’s gorgeous of course. Tall and slim, hair like fire and more than enough attitude to back it up. She knows she’s beautiful but she isn’t conceited. Just… self aware.

But would it really be right to go on unhappy,
to teach watching eyes that sorrow is their plight?

I was young and naive, and the city was the opposite. I looked into her old weathered face and saw a woman, some how a sly old grandmother who was ready to teach and a young flirtatious girl at the same time.

His BlackBerry buzzed on the nightstand as the sun was going down. He waited. Two vibrations and it was just an email that could wait until later to be answered. Any more and it would be the alarm, signaling time to get up. Buzzz… Buzzz… Buzzz. Shit.

Smoking cheap cigarettes in the rain…
Walking in the cold without a proper coat, collar up against the wind…
Listening to a train pass through town, one whistle short of knotting a red bandana to an elm branch and heading to Bangor. Leave the bills, the mortgage, and the post to those that actually like them…
Melancholy isn’t depressed… in fact melancholy is the brief moment after joy decides to go on sabbatical. That moment when your happiness has somehow flittered away like a little boy’s quarter down the sewer drain… He knows …