And

"Speak of an angel and an angel appears," he says outside of the bar, my bar, the dive bar. And I am only passing. And I think about the angel from the day before, how he stopped and asked for a quarter, then turned and said to the two of us,"You are better than average," and how, "It is better to burn out," like his cigarette,"than to fade away," like his cigarette, and how he left us embracing and how that wasn't enough.

Just before the man outside the bar says, "Speak of an angel and an angel appears," I try to miss the lines in the pavement. It is superstitious. I think of the synchronicity of the day, other people's problems placed against my own ashy problems, burned out in an ashtray, and I wonder when these things will be resurrected to confront me.

My short breath, induced by alcohol. I couldn't have done anything differently and so I didn't.