Six men stood side by side in the door. Each held in his hand a tool, a threat, and a vow. The first man points a gun at his ear, and is gone with a loud noise and a flash of smoke. The next man waves a flag with eight stripes, none the same. He too is gone. The next man, the third, sips from a deep cup. He winks one eye, and leaves. The fourth man screams, cries, rails at fate: his child is in his hands. The fifth man, small and quick with hate, sucks on a pen shaped like the sun. His eyes are wild and mad. And the last man, broad of beam and coarse of face, holds his hands closed, and smiles.

They are all gone, six men, one by one, and he sat in a room that night filled with slow grace.