again

I’m drinking. Again.

(Ok, not like it’s a rare thing.) 

I’m drinking

and I’m drunk

on alligator tears,

mumbling about nothing

that has everything to do 

with something,

but I can’t put a finger on it 

through the dark, bourbon haze.

And that was the point, right?

To drink 

until the fucking voices

speak in broken slurs

and pass out before me?

To forget them

in the moments

I surrender to oblivion,

with fuzzy outlines

and aching head

to remind me when I wake.

But the booze

rusts the hinges 

on the barn doors

of the past

and the horses

are running wild,

stampeding through my now.

I wish the liquor 

could be loaded

in a 12 Gauge 

made for memories…

I’d take aim,

down another shot,

and obliterate

every piece of me

burn the clothesline 

I find the zipper

that begins 

just below my chin

and runs

to the hidden seam

resting between my thighs.

I have grown differently 

than these 

worn garments,

this outdated face,

stiff and filthy

from overuse and time.

My shoulders have become

nothing more

than a sagging clothesline

for a person 

pinned in the breeze,

my movements not my own.

I’ll drop them in the mud 

where they should have been

all along.

I’m done with pretending to be

what others think 

they already know

prospect, week before the end of the month

First, there are the screams.

Then comes the crash

and the child screaming, “No!

Mommy! Don’t!”

My own child’s small golf clubs 

sit by the back door,

the ones his grandfather 

gave him

in hopes 

he’d grow up to be

more like him

than me.

But they are metal

and solid.

I don’t think,

because I can’t.

Toddler club in hand,

I run.

I don’t knock,

because I can’t.

Because the sounds 

are as solid

as the cries 

of the child

and I am not 

an avenging angel,

I am a lioness

protecting cubs.

Theirs, mine, ours;

cubs are cubs are cubs

and none should ever cry

like that.

Club in hand.

Child in hand.

Phone on wall

in hand.

Police are called

and the night spirals into silence,

which is all any of us wanted from the start