There were three men sitting at a bar within some old town filled with sadness and despair. This night was rainy and it was cold, and all could say that a flood was approaching from the southern winds. The bar wasn’t crowded, and the bartender was often unable to be found as the TV spoke softly about tomorrow’s television happenings. On the bar was a notebook filled with poems, scribbled all over and in immaculately dreadful condition.

All three men were wearing suits, all looking very much the same but also so different at the very same time. Man number one was in a cheap black suit with cheap black pants, his hair a bit all over the place and his hands tapping the table, his feet doing just the same down below him. He spoke to himself about anything he could think of, whether it be a stupid idea or a stupidly ingenious thought. “You’re always so right, he always said, always so right, that was perfect that was perfect,” he muttered to himself as the weather reported responded back telling us about the recent casualties across seas. Tap tap tap tap went his hands on the table. He kept doing it and doing it, possibly unaware of what exactly he was doing. He was a very strange man, but nonetheless ingenuity sparked from his long eye stares from where he sat on this lonely night.

“Oh, what mistakes a man can make,” another man at the bar whispered to himself. His jacket was too long in the arms and he hid it by slightly sliding them up, making them bunch on his arms. He sat in pinstripes ferociously drinking whatever concoction he so school to drank. He often thought to himself that getting drunk or taking a hit would maybe make him feel more at ease, more numb like he needs to feel. But, he never did so. Maybe it was for his own integrity, maybe it was for his own care, or maybe he just wanted to imagine there was in this life something better than sadness and disappointed within the walls of this cheap bar on the side of a broken down highway. The news anchor reported his news still, and this man just smiled to himself. “Oh, what is a man but a box full of disappointment?” He held his head up high even though he spoke of ravaging sadness and worthlessness. “Bartender, get me another drink, it’s getting lonely out here,” he spoke aloud as the television flipped to a local commercial.

Finally we meet the man in the Armani suit. He wore Armani, but wore cheap shoes and a cheap tie. His hair was cut unlike the others, and he rested his head on his hand staring at the television screen, uninterested in the latest cleaning agents. “It’s not like I can use it on my suit.” His mind was in a different state of being, a state of being alive. “Poor fellows, they don’t realize that sadness is temporary and that opportunity is always definite, just not on the day of the sadness.” This man didn’t stay long, he was much too different, much to insane. You could tell by his demeanor that his suit spoke of happiness, but his tie spoke of sadness. Maybe he had a beacon of hope, or maybe he knew things change. He opened that door and the rain had settled, luckily for his Armani and his hair. As he walked out his war scars showed, everything he gained from life. It was as if he realized something so many never realized, and what that is I can not tell you as I do not know.

The man in the cheap suit at the front of the bar walked himself out to his car and gently cried. Who had hurt him, or what, I do not know. He slammed his hands on the stealing wheel and cursed his life like he rightly thought his life deserved. At least, in that very moment. The rain started back up and he smiled realizing that it was soon to be tomorrow. He slammed once harder on the wheel, and drove home in sad contentedness.

Finally, we have the man in the pinstripes again just sitting all alone at the bar, still waiting for a refill of his concoction of choice, whatever it may be. He picked up a phone while waiting and left a message to someone that I myself do not know, but he seems to know like they were a part of him. But why was he alone? I suppose we can’t know. He just told them of a feeling, a deep feeling, and hung up with a long sigh. He poured the icecubes on the bar and walked out with the glass he had, slamming it on the ground with a loud crash. He cut himself when some of the glass got him, and he just laughed. “Figures, but it’s only blood I guess.” He moved out of the place and stood outside in frustration and every emotion ever written down in the dictionary. He sat down on the wet ground and he began to cry like no man cried before. In that moment he bled, and he sobbed, and although it started raining again, he did not move. I do not know why he didn’t move, but he sat there sobbing and bleeding, unconcerned about himself. His eyes were filled with sadness, but his fingers bled with the possibility of hope, and his suit was stained with the words that tore him up. His shoes were forged by the idea that one can move, and his hair hid things he could not stand, but his heart removed it all and refused to allow him to raise the white handkerchief he had. He’d rather cry than use that white cloth as a form of surrender. It was there for somebody else, no one but them. His mind said no, but his heart said yes, and he tucked his arm into his jacket to push the handkerchief fully in his front breast coast pocket so it would not get stained with blood. Maybe there was no reason for this, or maybe it was his way of protecting everything that handkerchief meant. Uncertainty, possibility, the idea that you never know when you’re going to need it. He lived on hope, and hope he surely seemed to never run out of, even in the rain. He got in his car and drove off, to where I do not know, with his heart burning; with his heart burning.