Bar Food

Daddy had no intention of changing his lifestyle. Sixty years. He was in too deep. The dying sizzle of an oil-slicked pan made my stomach churn.

"I'm still a stroke waiting to happen," he mused. His newly lit Pall Mall was still smoking in the ashtray, waiting for him to finish guzzling the frosty splash of a Miller Lite washing along his crooked teeth. Only ninety-six calories, the bottle bragged. He was on his third one. It had been a lazy day.

Ketchup melts into the checkered red of the plastic tray. I swat at a fly insistent on landing on the condiments.

A housefly lives for twenty-eight days. What is sixty years stagnant compared to a month of rapid change?