On the worst days
all I could do was sit
and sip
and sip
and sip.
Slowly the level
of the liquor
dwindled
down,
down,
down
to zero
while I shivered,
hovered over
the toilet,
heaving.
The red-tinged bile
concerned me less
than my shaking hands,
my aching heart,
my jagged breathing.
I couldn’t drink fast enough
to keep the withdrawals away.
Was my body enacting revenge,
or was I punishing it?
Who has been betrayed?
Category: Poetry
-
little sips.
-
Lizard plays dress up
I muck about in my ill-fitting skin.
I grind my jawbone into grit.
I waft and I waver, and I wait and I wait.
My scaly shoulders suffer in the thick air.
It’s putrid, even rancid; every inhale burns.
I can’t stay here.
I make it halfway down the road,
I let out a chilling scream then, and turn around.
My sandpaper tongue probes the spaces between the dentin of my teeth.
I lick the sediment from my gums and I wait and I seethe.
Oh, this alien skin.
I grimace, spitting out sawdust remnants.
The first scale has sloughed off and hangs suspended halfway down my back.
I am reptilian. I am panicking, and wishing for the grace that I lack.
A quick glance around, but I no longer care who sees.
I unzip this human suit, step out.
No, I step in. To myself. To me.
