TRAVIS

Travis was a junkie All my friends were I was a wallower I watched them tie up their arms and collapse onto couches I was never high, and always on the same strange slow ride with them Travis rode a fixed-gear bike He had nowhere to live But never went without somewhere to sleep Travis was handsome He had a backpack and an iPad And nowhere to take a shower He would meet old ladies Whose husbands had moved on or passed He would make love to them For a week or two at a time Hold them in his arms And stroke their thin hair Kiss their lips, dissolving vermilion ridges. He would paint their fingernails and take baths with essential oils They would give him somewhere to stay and a few hundred dollars And by Sunday, Travis would tuck a perfumed envelope into his pocket And ride off on his fixie To score And he would come meet us With department-store lipstick on his collar And a pocket full of sour candy and dope. I asked him how he did it. How it didn’t rip his heart to shreds. “I really do love them,” he told me. “All of them.”