Gutterball

Didn’t I come home with you from the bar, was the rather well-played response
the naked inebriated and disoriented Larry “Gutterball” Graham offered to the critical question
what the fuck are you doing in my house.
It may have saved his life.
Clutching the crocheted Afghan with which he’d curled up on the couch a few hours earlier, Larry
searched for his boots and pants and spoke to the man
in soothing tones as one speaks to a horse in the presence of a dead calf,
easing into a gentle dissertation on any port in a storm
and the perils of leaving the front door unlocked,
knowing all the while the man could just as easily take a .38 out of his desk drawer
and put an end to all talk.
By then he’d found his boots, was pulling on his pants.
As stay the fuck out of my house was still hanging in the air
he’d already begun crafting the narrative he would tell that night at the bar.