Napoleon in Rags by Howie Good
TW: Cyanide
It was the season of mists and fogs. He had been forced by necessity to pawn his one good pair of pants. Now that he couldn’t confidently appear in public, he sat sulking in his underwear at the kitchen table. He couldn’t remember, Josephine wasn’t there to remind him, what it was like to live in anticipation of making love. Adversaries swooped around him like moon-crazed bats. If he had had a suicide pill, he might have taken it. The world only ever really pays attention when there is a panic or a traveling guillotine or when all the soldiers have syphilis.
Howie Good is the author most recently of the poetry collection Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).