pbwells

The Old Man With Coffee By p.b. wells the place is nothing special, peeling blue paint, tables scarred like bad memories, steam limping out of chipped mugs. I’m working on my caffeine habit and my talent for minding my own business when I see him. old guy in a coat that has seen more winters than I have good days, hat tilted like it gave up standing straight, hands parked on the table like two tired animals. he's not really looking at the coffee. he’s looking through it, down into whatever dark pool waits under the cheap ceramic. the room is full of clatter, spoons ringing, some loud couple laughing at nothing, music leaking from a speaker that should have been shot years ago, but he hears none of it. his eyes are somewhere else. I try to guess where. maybe it’s a summer night five lifetimes back, two boys and their first illegal beer behind a gas station, laughing so hard the foam spills, swearing they will be brothers until the end of the goddamn

Here’s to the Mess By p.b. wells they said it’s all gonna be fine, but how, when the sun cracks the sky open like a sick joke and your bones ache with things that haven’t happened yet? I’ve got a heart full of fists and a mouth full of broken glass, but the world keeps spinning like it’s got somewhere to go. and you, you walk in with that smile, like a question I never asked, but you’re just another lie, simmering in skin, all warm, soft, like you never did your part to destroy this thing we call love. sex? it’s a dirty word now, all sweat and teeth and nothing left but the smell of regret. I’ve fucked my way through too many dead ends to pretend there’s meaning left. but don’t tell me about the gods, those pretty-faced liars who hand out promises like candy and watch us choke on them with a grin. rage? it’s a fire, sure, but one that burns your insides to dust before you even get a chance to scream. it’s the only thing left when

The Man Who Says He Hates War by p.b. wells there is a man who says he hates war. he says it slow, like he is reading off the label of a bottle he cannot afford, trying to sound dignified while his tie cuts off the blood to his already empty head. he says he hates war then starts licking his lips every time a map comes out. he hates war but he wants Greenland, talks about taking it by force, if necessary, like a drunk uncle eyeing the neighbor’s truck. he hates war but he wants to annex Canada, the quiet kid at the back of the class who never bothered anybody, and now this clown wants to slap a collar on him and drag him across the border for the hell of it. he hates war but he talks about invading Mexico like he is ordering extra guac, easy, casual, as if cities do not burn the same way his toast does. he hates war but Venezuela is on the menu too, another place he cannot spell, a country he thinks is only gasoline and brown faces that owe

I STAND WHERE THE GODS ONCE SAT by p.b. wells I was not born beneath a star. I was born beneath a scream. The scream of a mother who tore me from her body like an omen carved in flesh, and the gods watched, silent, indifferent, already bored with their new pet bleeding into the dirt. They say we were made in their image. If that’s true, then the gods be as ugly as we are, spiteful, angry things crawling in the dark, spilling blood to feel something. They made us for their theater, stacked grief like mortar between empires, lit wars like candles, watched cities burn like incense before their thrones. We called it fate. They called it fun. I’ve seen the temples, marble and gold, the bones of the faithful ground into the foundations. Their statues stare down eyes carved to ignore, mouths that never speak, but I hear them. I hear them laughing every time a child dies for a cause the gods no longer remember inventing. You want worship? You want songs?

New Girl at the Local by p.b. wells They started calling her New Girl at the Local before anyone knew her name. she walked in slow, like someone testing the floor after a flood, eyes doing that half-scan of the room we all pretend we’re not doing. Sheri. that’s what the bartender said when she signed the tab. just Sheri. no wedding ring, no guy hovering at her elbow, no pack of giggling friends. she ordered a cheap beer and a shot that did not match it, something amber and serious, and I thought, alright, she’s not here to flirt with the jukebox. you could feel it on her if you watched long enough. Vulnerability. not the greeting card kind with soft music and sunsets, but the kind that makes you hold your cigarette too tight, the kind that hums behind your teeth when someone asks, “you okay?” and you lie. there was something, something hidden inside, you could see it in the way she kept one hand on her purse and one on the glass, like both

The Day They Killed Big Boy by p.b. wells He was never supposed to matter. just plastic and paint, that fat kid with the pompadour and the stupid happy face, holding a tray of food above his head like it was the Holy Grail of cholesterol. He was drafted into the mascot wars. Ronald McDonald in his clown drag. the Burger King freak with his dead eyes. Wendy with the pigtails and that frozen smirk. Chuck E. Cheese and his rabid rodent grin. a whole circus of plastic gods, smiling like they knew something you did not. Big Boy was my guy. my corner of the circus. That restaurant was never fancy. and never pretended to be. decent food at a decent price. no white tablecloths. no wine list that reads like scripture. but it wasn’t a dive either. no broken jukebox, no drunk in the corner pissing himself. It was middle-class. that rare sweet spot where you don’t feel like a fraud and you don’t feel like trash. I could walk in, sit down, and for an hour or two