pour me a drink 🥃

a slam poem

it’s getting bad again.

the kind of bad that sits in the back of your throat,

thick and quiet,

waiting for the sun to go down.

i can’t even drink anymore

without my mind taking a sharp left turn

into that dark place.

that familiar, jagged-edge space where

every little inconvenience,

a dropped glass, a missed call, a heavy sigh,

a key that won’t turn in the lock on the first try,

becomes a reason to hurt.

a reason to break.

suddenly, a minor detour isn’t just a delay,

it’s an eviction notice from the world.

it’s a text message written in a language i can’t decode,

telling me the foundation is giving out.

i am sitting in the quiet, making plans to run.

mapping out roads to get away from everyone i love.

but the math of my mind isn’t mathing, because

how can that be true?

if i loved them, i’d stay, right?

that’s what they tell you.

they tell you love is an anchor,

but right now, the anchor is just dragging the ship to the bottom of the ocean.

so i wrap myself in the guilt of it,

telling myself it’s selfish,

so damn selfish of me,

to think i can just evaporate. to think i can just escape.

we call it selfish to want to leave,

but nobody talks about how cruel it is to force a ghost to keep pretending it has blood.

to keep standing in line at the grocery store,

buying bread while the house burns down inside their chest.

and if you asked me why,

i wish i could give you a blueprint.

i wish i could hand you a map of my malfunctions, but

the truth is, i don’t know myself.

i don’t know why the gears grind this way.

i don’t know how to explain the physics of a body

that feels like it’s falling.

deeper. and deeper.

falling into a grave that i dug with my own two hands,

and now i’m just laying in the dirt, wondering who ordered the shovel.

i’m the architect who designed the prison,

the warden holding the keys,

and the inmate screaming at the bars, all at the exact same time.

all i want,

all i really want,

is for you to hold me.

just hold me until the fractures fuse,

until i feel complete again.

but who are you?

who is you?

whose arms am i supposed to run to when the world feels this empty?

in a world that never left a placeholder,

never carved out a single square inch of space for me.

i’m a stray radio frequency searching for a tower,

blasting music into a static void,

forgetting that everybody else is just listening to their own white noise.

so i’ve stayed here long enough.

trying to drown the noise out.

trying to flood the engine with the alcohol.

the same way you did.

and it didn’t work for you either, did it?

i watched you.

you drank, and you drank, and you drank,

chasing the numbness until your liver swelled up,

and i stood there, looking at the wreckage, and i swore.

i swore on everything i had that i would never be like you.

i built a life out of spite.

i did everything the exact opposite of how you did it.

i kept my room clean, i checked my boxes, i ran the miles,

i grew up to be the most disciplined version of your disaster.

except the bottle.

that was the one ghost we both inherited.

the one thing we had in common.

you can run a thousand miles in the opposite direction,

but if you’re carrying their shadow in your backpack,

you’re just taking their darkness for a walk.

the apple didn’t just fall far from the tree,

it rolled down the hill and landed right back in the same muddy ditch.

i saw you pour.

drink. after drink. after drink.

and from the outside, it looked like magic. it looked like it worked for you.

it looked like you found a trapdoor in the ceiling and just slid out.

so god help me, i followed.

and i hated myself for it, every single drop, but i did it.

just like you.

drink. after drink. after drink.

i’d pour until the glass was glass and the bottle was empty,

but it didn’t help, did it?

it never helped.

because the alcohol doesn’t drown the demons, it just gives them a swim lesson.

it turns out they have gills.

it turns out they’ve been waiting for the flood.

my mind goes right back to that same exact headspace

that i was begging to get away from.

only now, the volume is turned up.

the urge is heavier. the shadows are louder.

when you mix gasoline with a fire you’re trying to put out,

you don’t get peace. you just get a brighter view of the destruction.

i poured liquid mercury down my throat,

and wondered why my internal temperature kept dropping.

and i am left sitting in the quiet of a messy room,

staring at the bottom of a glass,

realizing the trapdoor was just a mirror all along.

asking the walls...

what’s the point?

what is it all... for?