Coleman Riggins
You will take a Gamble and Win.
Lucky Numbers: 13, 21, 23, 33, 47, 51, 60
I keep making gambles. Each of my chips are played out on the table. All that I’ve had, I’ve given. I do what I can with the cards I’m dealt.
When I was young, I played with the poker case that my father hid in the back of the game closet. I made games to play for myself. The molecules of my fingertips brushed against the molecules of the poker chips. I was unaware of currency. I didn’t know what we had.
My uncle’s old girlfriend used to have parrots. I was fascinated about her ability to do her hair and her makeup. I was fascinated by her obsession with beauty and wanted to be beautiful too. The parrots watched as I poked around her beauty supplies late at night. I told them not to tell. They told everybody that they wouldn’t tell.
In high school, I made a friend that was a bull. He kept going and going and going and never seemed to run low on energy. I admired him. He took me aside one day, gave me an invitation. I asked where and he hushed me. The Little Dipper seemed larger that night. I dropped all my spoons. I gave him my chip and never ended up going. Afraid.
Bibles on Bibles on Bibles piled up in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Each year I got a new one. Each year, I scribbled my name on the inside and never opened it again. The Holy Day would come every week. I’d take a Bible and go. I’d sing. I’d love. I’d mutter prayer beneath my breath while feeling the poker chips in my pockets, hidden from the world.
You can’t keep this up, my mother would say to me one day when I returned from the O’Hare International Airport. I can’t keep doing this, I would mutter to myself, alone in the corner of my room, flipping a coin, head in the clouds. I would wake up late to texts worried about if I was alright or not from him. I didn’t have the heart to tell my lover that I was starting to drown in doubt.
My thumb burned from the lighter in my hand the other day. I inhaled an ember on accident and my stomach ached from the takeout carton sitting next to me on the porch. My smoke billowed into the night air. I sat in a chair that looked like the ones we had when we were kids. I watched my smoke filter and disperse. Wondered if that was all I had to give.
One of my lucky numbers was 13 which seemed to be fitting.
I gambled each of my chips this time.
Did I win?