Gravel and Honey

By Mike Vakian
I was nineteen and dumb,
wearing secondhand boots and a soul full of notebooks.
Paris was a fever dream,
cigarettes, cobblestones, and
cheap wine that tasted like regret.

Then I met Earl.
White South African with a voice like gravel and honey,
bartender at The 5th,
where expats go to forget and
philosophers pour drinks with chipped knuckles.

He talked like he’d lived five lives already.
Told stories that smelled of gin and gunpowder,
and once had me watch the bar
while he got into some mischief
that neither of us would ever explain.
We just laughed.
And lit another smoke.

One night he put on Lou Reed—
not Sweet Jane, not the radio stuff—
but that raw, cracked spoken word
where poetry wore leather jackets
and every verse came with bruises.

“This,” he said,
“is how the truth sounds.”
And I believed him.

Because Romeo Had Juliette was playing,
and the ashtray was overflowing,
and the ghosts of the Left Bank leaned in to listen.

Romeo Rodriguez squared his shoulders
and cursed at Jesus,
and I swear the streetlamp outside flinched.

Earl poured two shots of something brown,
didn’t say a word.
Just raised his glass and grinned,
like a man who knew exactly
how beautiful a ruin could be.

And I will always remember
those nights,
those streets,
that man.