Irish Coffee

This poem begins in suburbia –

Rows upon rows of white-shutter cookie-cutter houses,

and in one of them is me,

barricaded by ruddy cheeks and sloppy smiles and the loud voices of the living.

In a moment this party crosses a threshold,

its audacious joy rising to a boil.

The rest of my drink is a blazing meteor

sailing down the black sky of my body

and I slip, silently, upstairs.

​

It is quieter here, cooler, and I can breathe again.

Just past the banister is a closet,

and a girl curled up in it, asleep

like a seashell tossed in the tide of old coats and dust bunnies.

She isn’t who I was hoping to see, but I’m fresh out of hope anyway,

so I duck between layers of moth-eaten wool

and take a seat on the floor across from her,

press the place where spine meets skull

to the hard wooden wall.

​

I close my eyes and see myself somewhere else,

kneeling on hard floor, picking up the ripped scraps of paper that tell our story

laboring long to fit them together,

to join them with tape and glue and make them comprehensible,

then using my teeth to tear them to shreds once again.

I cut myself open and fuse the pieces to my vertebrae,

bones that fit to bones drink in black ink.

I see myself in a vast library, a maze of shelves and books,

and I see myself reading you every single one, reading until my voice breaks and my throat bleeds,

because you asked me to.

​

I open my eyes and again I am here,

blanketed by the castoffs of a family I don’t know,

watching a drunk girl I have never seen before tonight,

stir and wake.

​

I take her by the hand and lead her out the door,

hoping to find some friend of hers with a car and enough sobriety to take her home.

I make it as far as the pristine fence

before I turn and see her far behind me,

eyes turned up to the moon as if it’s something she’s never seen before,

as if it’s falling from the sky in some wondrous rapture.

​

So I look, too, and see a shining spotlight in a starry sweep of darkness,

a lighthouse glowing in a black and choppy sea.

So I forget the library and the long drive home,

and sit with her on the artificial-green grass,

let its dewy blades gently tickle our legs,

and wait for morning to come.

​

(I sometimes post my poetry on my tumblr)

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