NaPoWriMo #4 - The Good Stuff

The Good Stuff

You’d like to think you could hoard the good stuff

Store it up in the bunker for when you need it most

But you can’t

You don’t even know what it is

You always grab the wrong things

You have no idea 

What will be the hardest to replace

You fill your cart with toilet paper having no idea

that popcorn runs out first

Hold your little Zoom meeting up against

The radiance of friendship

See the holes where the good stuff used to be

The immediacy required for well-timed jokes

And no need to repeat the jokes

Or to repeat anything

The expanse of a pause

The words between the words

The hum of passing cards beneath the hum of background music

The way Chuck rocks back in his chair while he decides which card to play and you wonder when that chair will finally break

The way Chuck’s wife, Marie, demands that he get on with it and he does, playing the wrong card

The way Tim shouts “a card laid is a card played” and there is a battle that can only be felt and and Tim always wins

By 10:30 Marie convinces Chuck to be the designated driver without a word spoken and by 11 she is slurring–but no so much a webcam could catch it

The socks Tim is wearing and the way he smells different than anyone you know–both warm and wild

The eye rolls and the hair flips and the way Chuck laughs so hard he spits chips onto he table

You don’ miss any of this until you miss it all 

You can never store the good stuff