Greg returned to my dorm room around 2am,
and ordered two pizzas from my phone with my money,
and pizza drew the others, reliably, those crisp, tomato-ey beacons.

Ryan sat cross-legged on the rug near the boxes
eating while I explained which album contained the three
saddest, consecutive songs ever recorded – which may, admittedly,

have been slight hyperbole from a drunk,
musically-illiterate collegiate, but then again,
three songs don’t have to be the saddest songs to be sad songs.

We listened and drifted to our own cotton-swathed
trials and traumas, and we each intoned over and echoed
the artist when lyrics hit closest to home.

Ryan left with tears in his eyes, rum and saline, but still,
few of us can compete with mass graves or miscarried justice;
a man doesn’t need to be the saddest man to be a sad man.

We laughed, a little, to trivialize the outpouring of emotion,
and played video games while the others gradually departed,
then Greg left too, characteristically buoyant, but from my window I saw him

taking the long way home.