Issue 1 - Cowboy by Adam Moorad

Cowboy by Adam Moorad

He was a tall man with a thick build and was very angry. I remember how the muscles in his jaw were clenched tight as he laid back, stretching out across the table.

Years ago he had been a football star and earned a reputation of sorts as a winner with a team in Texas. The game was the passion of his life. “I came here because I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning,” he said embarrassedly. “My head feels fine, but my body is old and worn-out. I need to be able to get up and go. For one day I would like to feel the way I use to, and not like an old man.”

There is a tone that accompanies the voice of an old man through which you can see real pain. It comes after a long life of hard work that has brought him much success and happiness, or one or the other, or neither. Then, suddenly, he finds himself unable to go on as he once had. Something in his biology stops. The physical decay that has been unfolding since conception finally catches up. He bursts into tangents, perhaps unknowingly. The elderly brain waves of his mind crash sporadically from his lips, left unchecked by failing brawn of an ego blunted by time, and he is now unable to express himself as he once did. It is in such moments that a man learns he is just a man.