Closing Time

The glass is still cold.

Somebody is laughing too loudly
at the end of the table.

An old song plays through pub speakers
nobody has properly listened to in years.

Someone is already asking for one more
like they always do.

And that’s the problem with closing time.

You never realise it’s happening
until much later.

One Friday becomes every few months.
Every few months becomes Christmas, maybe.
Then somebody sends a message saying:

We should all get together soon.

And the strange thing is,
they mean it when they send it.

Some stop coming out.
Some move away.
Some become faces online
you stare at for a few seconds too long.

Everything has a closing time.

The office where you learned
to sound more confident than you felt.

The mates you saw every day
until one day you didn’t.

The version of yourself
who needed every room to hear him
because silence felt too much
like disappearing.

Anger, if you are lucky.

Jealousy.

Blaming the world
because it was easier
than admitting you were frightened.

Football in the park.

Chips from the swimming pool cafe
with too much salt
after an hour in the water.

Running home from school discos
convinced somebody might be following you.

And then, sometimes,
closing time is not gentle at all.

The girl you should have believed.

The second you realised
you had broken something
in the way she looked at you.

Not anger.

Worse.

Like the person she thought you were
had disappeared in front of her.

There are things
an apology cannot put back.

You learn from them.
You carry them.
You become quieter in places
where you used to be loud.

Then life goes on,
which is the strangest part.

Bins go out.
Bills arrive.

Someone still asks
if you want another pint
five minutes after the bell,
as if that has ever worked.

I used to think closing time
was the end of a night out.

Lights up.

Music cut mid-song.

Chairs stacked badly
by people trying to help.

But owning a pub taught me otherwise.

I’ve stood on both sides of it.

I’ve been the one asking to stay,
and the one counting glasses,
wiping tables,
turning locks,
letting the silence back in.

Maybe everything has a closing time.

Not one great ending.

Thousands of small ones
arriving quietly
while we are laughing,
or working,
or looking the other way.

Still, things find their way back.

A song.

A smell.

A street name.

Floodlights over wet grass.

Chlorine on a winter afternoon.

And for a few seconds
you are there again.

Not younger exactly.

Not forgiven.

Not fixed.

Just close enough
to touch the life
that made you,

and far enough away
to know you cannot stay.