A Drunken Stumble

The sacred babe of your mother’s eye glowing gold of train sets and playgrounds and your stuffed Benji to hold so closely over a flame in the kitchen and the heat only comforts your spite. These are Tuesdays in bed past bus stops and scholarships and a coffee liquor stolen from the kitchen’s top shelf. Stupid child on the bench at the baseball game; long fall to stumble over your own tongue while Becky loses interest and the sophomores in your friends’ cars get naked for fun. A relationship turns stale that goes so well: you took the bike and bent the spokes, the gentle pressure how curious from your heel and you broke your shelves and stuffed your Babe Ruth card quiet through the warmth of the garbage. The baby curls and belly laughs, your eyes admired just like your father’s in the mirror before his day and the child before him who wired phone lines for a living and looked in the mirror every morning the exact same way, but your eyes when they meet in the bathroom red-shot look through tunnels with no way out.