I sit, watching him drink even though he’s wasted.

Blotchy skin, red and damp, and the slick guitar strummed under slurring words.

When I was younger, I enjoyed this, he was goofy then, but now I look and see him for what he is. I understand.

Fuck, I understand. 

Our eyes meet, His, hollow and dim. 

Behind the blotchy skin, past the damp hair and the mumbling lyrics, I see his corpse, the death of the man I knew.

He sits in front of me, rotting away as he eats himself alive from the inside. A maggot.

We didn’t break eye contact until he began to sway to the chords he improvised. 

I wish I never saw him like this, I wish I never knew. 

I was forced to trade my hero for a ghost. The hollow shell of the person I wanted to be.

I don’t cry for him, I know now that he was never great. 

“You know, don’t you.” A disappointed slur broke me, and the guitar stopped

“You know,” the words repeated, and there was more finality this time. Resignation.

He takes another sip,