Title Yet To Be Discovered (Part 9) Poem by Mike Smith

We went through the motions of the nighttime routine. I sat in sour contemplation of my adventures from the last few days. Hell, from the last year honestly. I stirred little, my frame still lacking the ability to lose it tension, and my mind jumping from one event to the next trying in earnest to remember every minute detail of what all had transpired to lead me to this particular point in space and time. How I wound up in this basement with these people. This new adopted family we had all come to be familiar with.
Meanwhile, the parents readied the kids for bed. Trina always had liked to be a part of the children's bedtime routine, but today, with our newest addition to the group Em, she seemed even more invested than usual. The others, the non-parents aside from myself and Trina, were up to their predictable ways. Reading or solving word puzzles out of books from the library. Mick was drafting up his workout for tomorrow. His regiment was disciplined and well documented. He'd been trained from a young age to keep record of his reps and sets and to have a plan of what the next challenge would be. A goal to strive for to make the work worth its while.
Realizing my lack of activity in comparison to the rest I forced my thoughts away from the past. The coffee that I'd managed to find in the grocery store looked tempting. Typically we'd brew a limited amount in the morning and stick mostly to water the rest of the day. But I decided without any consultation that I was creating an exception to that rule given the circumstances.
The smell of the dark roast drew attention. The rest of the coffee drinkers in the group took note and readied their mugs. No one questioned my decision, besides Mick that is. Mick didn't even drink coffee. Claimed he never has. But for some reason he thought it necessary to point out to us all that caffeine at this time of night was a virtual waste of resources.
Anything to get under my skin. I let it slide without comment. But the point was apparent. He didn't appreciate me taking this executive role I'd filled in recent times.
Among our many differences, this was perhaps the chiefest: Mick is always concerning himself with how others actions impact him. I concern myself firstly with how my actions impact others. Once I think all others are well cared for, if there's time, I focus on myself. Mick lived his life from the center of the universe.
The kids now in their places of rest, those of us not so sleepy as to lay down ourselves sat at a table and told old stories of youth and a more simple time. It was refreshing to reminisce. It never did stop amazing me how very complex each individual in our group was. The makings of a human being. The stories that stay with them and what can be drawn from the way they're told. When stripped of all our luxurious forms of entertainment from before the blast we found enrichment in our own memories of a different life.
As the caffeine wore off and the night grew long the members of the group slowly dispersed back to their familiar sleeping areas. Finally it was just Trina and myself sitting across from one another at the round table. I remember her eyes seeming full of wonder that night. A strange mixture of admiration and longing, but also of suspicion and worry. Of deep concern, yet of full confidence in the man she stared at. She asked me, finally, after an uncomfortably long pause in our whispered conversation, 'What actually happened to you out there Ian? '
I considered my response too long to seem fully sincere, 'More than I'd care to share.'
Not immediately after that, but not long either, she lead me to her area of what we had made our underground home. For the first night in the nearly nine months that we'd lived their, a man and a woman shared a bed that night.