I Reflect Upon a Lonely Old Man at my Library

My library is full of lonely old men.

Why, just a couple of days ago an old man needed help finding some books on hold for him. I found them and we checked them out.

He said “Since my wife died I read a lot of these.”

Fuck.

So I cut the lonely old men a ton of slack.

Oh, who am I kidding. I am a professional slack cutter. My job is to try and find ways to cut slack. God help me when I can’t be cutting slack.

I see this guy up in his chair at the west facing windows all the time now since the pandemic, well, receded. I guess that it’s receded. I nod gravely at the old man. He nods gravely back at me.

I think

“Lonely old man”

Then one day I looked at him and I realized:

That’s Picasso!

As if it makes any difference.