The sun had set outside of the corner café, and I knew I was fucked.
With the rate Austen was reading through his poems, there wouldn’t be any daylight to walk home. To the dozen or so other young adults in here with us, he read with no rush whatsoever. This particular poem was an extended metaphor about how the smoke of apartment fires choked the city like the host of other community issues. My friend was quite the subtle activist. I had to commend him for making his writing amount to more public visibility than my work ever could.
