I paint tragedies with cheap merlot
in the swelling wake of a three day binge
Look ma’ no hands
I screech at the gasping crowd
four stories below the flat black roof
of my ex-wife’s apartment complex
In a moment of clarity
I blink, then
ditch
before the uniforms make the scene
and collapse
in a third floor
janitorial closet
I puke putrid acid
into a sink, and
pass on consciousness
onto a bag of forgotten laundry
I dream of clouds and leopards and soup and blood
Although I vaguely remember
attempting both,
I find myself neither
dead nor arrested
Instead, I am rudely
poked awake
by a stoic man
twice my age
at a broomstick’s distance
blinded by the obnoxious
fluorescent glow
of the future
I dig
a crumbled five-dollar bill
out of my piss soaked jeans
and leave him stunned in silence
yet with a solid story
type: barstool entertainment
for years to come
I slip out
into another damned sol birth
and curse my throbbing skull
as a rideshare returns me to
the constant tragedy
of mendacious sobriety
The merlot
runs less viscous
than blood
and pools
beneath the canvas
of what used to be
a mirror
- Afton Light, 2022
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