The Bar Keeper

I know them all,
these dour drinkers;
know their names and ailments,
the hours they keep and what their "usual" is.

I have it ready on the bar
at their customary stool before they
even reach the light,
Chivas-rocks, vodka tonic,
tequila with beer chaser, Margarita extra salt.

They hunch in sullen silence
or whisper sweet nothings to their cradled love
that slowly kills them for their devotion.
It is my lot to be the accomplice,
to watch the slow decline,
the liver spots and bloated hands,
the shakes and, at last, an absence.

Someone always claims the vacancy,
hooking heels over the rungs and elbows
fitting the bar by design. New faces soon get as old
as their stories and still I nod and smile,
wiping, wiping, always wiping.

All night they buy me drinks to make me stay
and listen, elaborately insulted if I decline.
Some mornings I wake alone, fully dressed
with no memory of leaving work
or how I got home.