Like Love

The way things swirl when I’ve had enough, it just feels like love, you know?

It feels like someone is holding me up with each gulp, someone actually loving me. If I drink enough I can make them say things, I can make them tell me I’m worthy,  can make them stop all the crying.

I know it’s killing me. So is this loneliness – you don’t see anyone trying to change THAT part.

I’ll drink until there’s someone there, how’s that?

Blood

There shouldn’t always be so much blood, but there is. It’s just a symptom of the type of drinking I do, I guess. It’s just a symptom of other people not being able to close their fucking mouths when I do the type of drinking I do, I guess.

It’s my blood or the idiot who tried to take the bottle from me’s blood or maybe even some wine from a pretty lady every now and then. But somehow I wake up every morning covered in the stuff.

The Bottle

I’d rather wake up in this alley, half covered in vomit, half covered in blood, than deal with even half a second of my actual life.

The feeling I get waking up after a night of consistent hard liquor is probably a million times worse than the feeling that drove me to the bottle in the first place, but I just drink until that goes away, too.

Red Teeth

There’s something about red teeth. I find myself smiling red smiles all the time. I hear a word, or don’t hear enough, and I look in a wobbling mirror and my mouth is bathed in red. 

I’m used to it, though. Grew up with boys that made my teeth red. 

From the hitting, drenching parts of me. 

From the drinking, soaking my sorrows in wine. 

From gritting through birth.

And sometimes, just sometimes…

from sobbing so hard, my throat coated. 

The Parent

There’s a bitterness to it that I like. Feels like punishment if I do it right. 

Every now and then my teeth are red and I’m laughing, just laughing, like I never had a care in the world. They get redder and redder until I wake up and my mouth is so numb I can’t do anything but cough.

And it makes the crying part bearable. Not that there’s anyone around to witness all that. 

But I am not my own. So I brush it all away, stare at myself in the mirror until the room stops spinning, and make the boy breakfast.

One day, though, I’m sure I’ll choke to death.

On the sorrow or the wine, whichever gets me first. 

Imposter

My stories will never hold on their own. 

People never did come around for that.

There always has to be a catch. And I can hardly throw, 

as it is. 

The ground is too shaky. So I drink until I fall. 

That usually steadies it.