To the Last Bottle in the Back of My Fridge
I can quit whenever I want.
But not today, not now,
when you have just coaxed me onto a table
at the bar and now I am spiraling
out of sync with the music.
You are the crowd in the palm
of my hand as I uncork a tasting
of vintage stories and I share that funny varietal
about my friend who pressed her full-bodied lips
to the lips of the best man on the day before she tossed
her bouquet I stumble on bouquet
and remember too late that the
punchline was don’t tell anyone.
You spill an I love you from my mouth
before it is ripe. You add bubbles
to my conversations with that group of women
from book club who think I am immature,
make the house feel like a bar on TV
where everybody knows my name
and everybody knows my drink
and according to the acidic texts I receive the next morning
everybody wants to know why I said
their friend’s marriage was past its prime
but you have blotted out my slurred memory stains
and all I can remember is that I was the life of the party.
Your sickly-sweet aroma is still lingering in the air
when that nice man in my house calls me a mean drunk
in a too-soft voice, my voice soft, too,
and heavy with notes of regret,
and you are something to blame my heavy mood on,
and my heavy moods finally make me think about quitting you,
but the thought of quitting makes me depressed,
and being depressed makes that nice man finally discard me
like the dregs at the bottom of a glass,
and being discarded makes me feel like the glass is always half-empty.
And a half-empty glass always makes me thirsty.