One Night

Broken wine glasses on the kitchen floor. Empty bottles in the fridge. The morning will clean them up. Tonight we only have each other. This last night together our only parting gift.

And then we'll go back to being ourselves.

Drinking alone.

Touching no one.

Breaking the bottles on purpose. Stepping on the pieces.

Because sometimes all I want is to remember the hurt. That something did live inside this skin once, even if now it's dead.

Left turns into heavy traffic. Parking spaces beside the water. Engine idling underneath us. Picking our moments like wild flowers.

Only parting gifts. A game show. Contestants without the answers.

Dents in the walls. Semi-tragic voicemails. Drinking alone. Listening to the phone trying to disconnect.

It tasted how I'd always imagined it. Hard to swallow. The gasp filling my gut. With a euphoric nausea.

His tongue like mouthwash. His fingers like broken glass.

And then there were only the parting gifts. The gameshow was over. We were ourselves again.

Drinking alone.