she awoke to find star tattoos on her fingers
and twelve different receipts from her favorite bar
crumpled around her liquored clothes,
she attempted to piece the night together

like bread crumbs, there were clues all over her studio apartment:
a broken heel on her best pumps, a note in someone else’s hand-writing calling her a whore,
a few broken nails, a busted lip and and and and
everything else wasn’t the same

she stumbled to the bathroom and took a long pause at the mirror
her face was swollen,
her eyes red,
her hair full of burnt leaves
and her confidence lying in the used condoms strung along the floor

and this wasn’t the first time
and this wasn’t her memory

her eyes were having trouble adjusting to the sun
as she fumbled to the car
the tires were all fine, no new scratches on the doors, no broken windshield this time,
no dead bodies in the trunk

she got in, locked the doors, pulled out a map and headed for a new city

some would say this was just the hazards of being an alcoholic
some would say this is why she’s never been married
and some might say this is why her daughter was taken away from her

but what they don’t say, what they don’t really see
is the glass full of regret she gulps down

they don’t see the the knife she cuts herself with,
the self-loathing becoming an old joke between this bottle and those pills

and she can’t tell them when her mouth is full of broken teeth
and her tongue is numb from whatever pills she grabbed this time

and she wasn’t wasted a few years ago when she slapped her daughter in the local Wal-Mart
and she didn’t hire a lawyer when they took her away
and she hasn’t opened any letters because she hasn’t gotten any
and she’s written notes on napkins, tissues that won’t ever be sent

she carries it all around in an old cigar box
wanting to bury it or burn it or die with it:
she hasn’t decided which

one day she will become alive enough to fight
but today just isn’t that day.

04/08/2010

Posted on 04/08/2010
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