All My Friends

    Those damn birds were harping like car alarms yesterday when I took that first step outside my apartment and I planted my cane in the sidewalk the way I do everyday like I’m trying to drag the ground under my feet which is so often the way I do things and I did so all the way to the subway where I had to sit next to the same blond teenage mother with her fucking baby again and good sweet Christ the little fucker was smiling at me which I can’t understand because I was scowling and glaring him down like I wanted him to melt off his bones the whole damn time but he just smiled and laughed and his mother cooed and cooed like a retarded owl but eventually I got off the damn thing and went to the office where McKinney was making another one of his bullshit “New Media” presentations and good sweet Christ I should’ve fired him right there on the spot but the other directors think he has some good ideas so I just scowled at him and he gave me a doll-faced smile like he couldn’t even tell but that’s not even the worst part because the worst part is when I went to the corner deli that I go to every day and I ordered tuna on rye like I do every day and I always say “Tony, not so much mayo, please not so much mayo” but lo and fucking behold there was about a metric ton of mayo on the sandwich and I never want to start a fuss so I just scraped it off and I scowled at Tony too but he just smiled like he just baked me my favorite pie which is obviously far from the truth and then I went back to my apartment, got washed up and went to bed…
    …and then the next morning I heard a crash and a bang and a boom and a ca-crack-cra-kow and when I looked outside my window there were no birds chirping and no cars on the street and most of the houses on my block looked like burning eggshells so I thought “My God, My God, the terrorists picked us, they picked here” and I kicked myself for living in such a bull’s-eye of a city and I wondered if all my friends would be okay and I remember praying “Dear God, let my friends be ok, just let them get out of here alright” and I kicked myself again for wishing this on them because I knew they just couldn’t have deserved it and I nearly cried at the thought but then I heard an ambulance siren coming down the street and a dozen people came out of the back of the vehicle shouting for people to come out of their homes and I saw that mom with her brat and McKinney in his dumb gray suit and Tony from the deli, still in his mayo-smeared uniform…
    …so I heaved a sigh of relief and took a step out of my apartment, dragging the ground under me and wearing a beaming scowl.