He Will Give

I began living in this apartment and immediately wondered when I’d be kicked out. I paid my rent and didn’t stomp very much but I had roommates and it is difficult to predict when someone will begin to hate you. We talked about dying many times but I guess I didn’t take it seriously. We had romantic desires to perish at twenty-seven but I outlived it and I thought he would too. I am laying on the stretch of the carpet where I sleep and it’s the kind of carpet that gets very dark when rubbed one way and very light when rubbed the other so that you can never tell if it is dirty. I had to work when his body was to be visited but I would not have gone anyway. He didn’t like people that were too sentimental. In his obituary they had printed the sentence: “He was a telemarketer.” but he wasn’t, that was just what he did for a living, just that same as I did those three years we knew each other, and those nights of him riding a bike through a college town selling god-knows-what— that was what he did too and a lot of people called him a criminal and of course he was but he was a good person and he was my friend and eventually we all get killed by this goddamn world that wakes up every morning and never lets us hide. He cared about philosophy and literature and music and they called him a telemarketer. What will they call me?