Jesse’s dead, overdosed on pills. Jesse and me, we go way back. Me Desert Storm with the Shock and Awe air strikes, him Afghanistan and the suicide bombers. Jesse called me Old Man, since I was ten years his senior. Jesse was 23 when he passed. My eyes have been sweating all day. The paramedics  found Jesse asleep on the grass near the shelter’s fountain. The empty bottle of pills beside him. Jesse and me, we had each other’s back for six months. We joined up on the sidewalks. Two veterans from the same different wars. Covered our six when we bedded down in the alleys. Fought off the rats and the weirdness, together. Before we had enough of that madness and turned ourselves in at The Settlement rescue mission. We never came home after the West Asia wars. We cop to that. We’d buy a pack of those skinny Asian cigarettes that sell down the block for twin bucks a pack.  He’d smoke one half of a nail, me the other. But we had promised each other to dry out from the booze. That was a promise we kept. So why did you forget to stay alive, Jesse? Why? There was  note in Jesse’s pocket. “Malcom, I’m sorry. But I’m tired of shadows. Reverend Bentham, please give my half of our wages cleaning buildings to Malcom.” My eyes have been sweating all day. I’m carrying on for Jesse, one step at a time, like a soldier marching. I’m going back to school like Molca, the ex boxer. Molca got beat up in the ring. But he never gave up, especially when he retired from the sport. He’s gone back to school not just just to make money, but to learn a better way from the pounding he took. I asked Jesse about the shadows once, the shadows robbing his world. “What’s there to say,” Jesse shrugged. The war robbed Jesse of words.  “Who I am now, I can’t say.” That was Jesse’s sorrow. I’m going to borrow Jesse’s youth, one day at a time. For us both.