Arrives home
Just before dawn
To slip on his robe
And peruse his evening’s activities
In a leather bound journal
That’s filled with coded writing
About women and strong drinks
He sleeps until noon
Sometimes one
Making sure every room
Has closed black curtains
So as to keep out
Anything resembling
The appearance of daylight
Some call him a vampire
But he only sucks blood
From small rabbits
And the occasional lamb
Other than that
He’s as human as anything
In his bathroom
Are several dead bodies
Stacked high
In the bathtub
He is not a murderer, no
He is not a serial killer
Although, of course,
A handsome man living alone in the city
Invites comparisons to American Psycho
But the fact is
People just show up at his house
Get in his bathtub
And die
And sometimes
He doesn’t get a chance to remove the bodies
Until four of five have piled up
He’s a busy man
It’s understandable
In his kitchen
He fries Indian rubber
In a deep fryer
In small digestible chunks
His penchant for eating non-edible things
Started a few years back
After his motorcycle accident
And he hasn’t been able to kick it quite yet
His apartment is on the seventy-eighth floor
And every so often
A man or woman will show up at his door
Asking if they can commit suicide
By jumping from his balcony
Or laying down in his tub
The Urban Bachelor has no idea
Why people who are drawn to death
Are magnetically pulled to him
But he finds it to be
A great inconvenience
In his closet, he has suits
From every designer in Italy
And one or two
From the French
But those aren’t his favorite
His skills are limited
And he makes the bulk of his living
By competing in underground fight clubs
And betting on longshot Grammy nominees
And, when he’s feeling wild,
The National Book Awards
The Maldives is his favorite vacation spot
And North Carolina
Topiary blue is his favorite color
But only to look at
Never to wear
The last woman he dated
Ended up being two different women
Who looked similar to each other
But were very displeased
When they found out
They were being
Inadvertently two-timed
The Urban Bachelor is prepared to die alone
And, in fact, he’s somewhat looking forward to it
His eulogy will be given
By a friend from prep school
And his eleven younger brothers
Will be the pallbearers
He plans to die of a quick illness
With just enough mystery surrounding it
To make people wonder
Whether or not he was killed
Whoever finds his journal
Will have a hell of a time
Parsing his code
But once they do
They’ll be in for quite a ride
And he envies them
And the readers who will inevitably tear through the
pages
Of the published novel that follows
He’s given up smoking
And hard drugs
But every so often
He’ll go out on his balcony
And stand on the railing
To see if death is ready for him yet
Or if it’s going to be another few years
The wind slides around him
But it doesn’t push
Or pull
It just tickles him a little
Which he doesn’t enjoy
One bit
After a few minutes
He goes back inside to get ready
And remembers
That the bathtub needs to be emptied
In the event
That death
Changes
Its mind
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