Terence McCaffrey

The Guest

Our friend, fresh from his stint at The Institute of Living,
is coming over again for dinner. No doubt he’ll talk
about his broken engagement, the job he cannot bring himself to,
then slowly trace his missteps back to his alcoholic parents. 

In between he’ll drink red and absorb our children’s laughter,
crack a fat joke, reminding us of what he used to be like:
thirty pounds lighter in college, fit as fuck and on fire.
He’ll look into his glass with dull, extinguished eyes, at odds

with the tangled way he his wired, a mess
of distrust and desire, uncommonly used to being alone.
At some point you and I will interrupt, sit back and say we’re stuffed,
secretly wondering what all that pain would do to us.

Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared most recently in The Big Windows Review, Blue Muse Magazine, Connecticut River Review, and Red Eft Review. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. in English from the University of Hartford. He lives with his family in Connecticut.