He walks into a room full of strangers,

Eyes downcast as he fumbles for the coffee pot

With trembling uncertain hands stained yellow

By nicotine and a thousand sleepless nights.

A stranger approaches him with a warm smile,

Gently taking his Styrofoam cup and filling it

Halfway “So you don’t spill it,” she says and

Gives it back to him with a nod he doesn’t understand.

“If you need more let me know and I will get it for you,”

She tells him as she takes his arm and leads him

To a smoke-filled room of laughing voices with slogans

That hang from every wall that meets his furtive glance.

“Where do I sit?” he whispers as all those voices wash

Over him in waves of welcome, with no regard to his

Scruffy, unshaven face or the smell of yesterday’s blackout

That still oozes from his sweaty brow.

“Anywhere you like,” she tells him and smiles again.

“You’ve earned your seat, I think,” and smiles once more

As he picks the closest one he can find, sits his cup on a small

Table and studies his battered shoes like objects never seen before.

His mind spins tangled webs of jumbled thoughts that

Surround the empty shot glass that waits for him at home,

Those same thoughts go to war with each other, crying out

Against a thing he can no longer control.

A stranger calls for order from the head of the room

With three quick raps of knuckles on wood and asks

For a moment of silence for those that still suffer, and

That silence falls like a veil across the face of despair.

And in that brief span, the beginner suddenly realizes,

For the very first time, that he has met true defeat against

An enemy he has fought, kicking and screaming, for over

Twenty-six years, and that the enemy is himself.

Then a chorus of voices rises up in prayer, a prayer

That asks for serenity, acceptance, change, courage,

Wisdom, all the things I lack, he thinks, all the things

I’ve never understood or thought I wanted.

The stranger at the head of the room reads something

From a book with blue covers then asks if there is

Anyone willing to try a new way of life, anyone who

Is sick and tired of being sick and tired.

The beginner is crying but doesn’t know it as he

Raises a trembling, uncertain hand stained yellow

With nicotine and a thousand sleepless nights,

Applause like thunder in his ears.

And, when that hour has passed, the beginner

Looks at the silver metal disk that says “To

Thine Own Self Be True” that was passed

To him, thinking

“They really weren’t strangers at all…”

END

“Beginner