Shitless Botan

Diary

Shitless Botan once swore an oath under a dojo roof that no longer exists, promising stillness, breath, control, the whole samurai catechism, and now he keeps that oath the way a man keeps a New Year's resolution to quit weed by lighting one anyway and calling it meditation. The night at Oleg's mum's house, a snake slid across the kitchen tile like it owned the mortgage, and Botan did not blink, did not flinch, did not even glance down when he crushed its skull under his heel, eyes locked the entire time on Oleg's, daring him to be the one who looked away first. Oleg blinked. Botan didn't, not then, not at the funeral pyre of his own discipline the next morning when he told himself today's the day he meditates before noon and instead aped into a shitcoin called $MONGOOSE at 9 a.m. because the name felt like fate laughing at him. He lives one day at a time because tomorrow is a rug waiting to happen and yesterday's snake already knew that better than most men learn it in a lifetime. Fear got surgically removed somewhere between the war and the weed, but the ache for the old order stayed stitched in, quiet, patient, watching him fail to floor himself into a better man one degenerate sunrise after another.”