In a bar that breathes the evening slow,
Where shadows stretch and jukeboxes glow,
A crowd gathers, glass in hand,
With tales too tangled to understand.

The barman, gray as the weathered wall,
Moves slow, like dusk before the fall.
His drinks? A craft the drunks proclaim,
He forgets their names, not their favourites.

They speak their hearts with slurred finesse,
Of love, of war, of loneliness.
They spill their lives between the swigs,
While jazz tunes dance through bourbon gigs.

Some claim a booth, some take a chair,
Some lean on wood with vacant stare.
But one old stool, off to the side,
Remains untouched, though none knows why.

Its seat is nicked, a crescent scar,
A wound that's outlived many stars.
It watches all, but says no word,
Its silence deeper than what's heard.

The barman nods, or sometimes grunts,
He's lost too much to bear their fronts.
His mind adrift in nights gone cold,
Forgets to lock the bar, he's told.

But that old stool, it listens still,
To every laugh, to every spill.
To broken vows and whispered dreams,
To secrets drowned in amber streams.

It knows the pain the glass won't hide,
It hears the pride some leave outside.
It waits, a throne for none to take,
A monument no hand will shake.

For though it's just a wooden thing,
No voice to share, no song to sing,
It keeps the stories others lose,
The listening stool, in scuffed-up shoes.