A Wino's Memories

A Wino's Memories

The Wine, by deviantART user juletjess

at the bottom
of wine bottles in the kitchen
hide misplaced memories
those drained, hold relived sins
the unopened ones swallow thoughts of her
swimming in scarlet-violet soup
grapes drowned into sweet poison
each swig pulls me back to her
while killing a little more
recalled kisses stain lips
the weeping remembrances afterward
make driving while under her influence
an arrestable hazard when
Bereaved Aortic Collapse
rises above 0.08 percent

napping in a bottle of Chilean Bordeaux
are roadtrips when I held her snoring on my thigh
beneath high desert nights
along a blacked-out highway
cruising above safe speed limits

resting in the green glass of Moscato d'Asti
her laughter at bad jokes at my expense
when her reverberations
could shake this empty bedroom
scattering inhibitions from my skin

Near the neck of a narrow Napa Pinot Noir
are all the words I spoke
when I thought she was listening
when instead she was just drunk on the sound of my voice
and whatever vocabulary spilled forth
was vacant of content but rich in tone

in the base of cheap Boone’s Farm
is the bruise she left after hitting me
for teasing her too unsympathetically
I drink it knowing
it gives me a headache by midnight and the day after

hiding in the depths of a Beaujolais Rosé
are mornings when I should have risen
but stayed longer and longer in bed
to hold her snoozing brilliance
outshining morning sunrises

behind the label of Wakayama Ume
are the sweetest moments
only suitable for the poetry held private
sent only to her and burned thereafter
you will have to pry me from the grave for those

swimming in Argentinian Malbec
are her stories of cities I’ve never seen
the feel of cobblestone stained with peasant mud
echoes of foreign tongues bartering wares
and revolutionaries’ martyred blood

in the unopened, overly large Mosel Riesling,
is the promise that she would return
when all the quantum equations of quarks and photons
conspired with gravitons and gluons
to nudge her back into my arms
it remains uncorked until she meets me
but I may be buried with it someday

if one could slice open these veins
vines have stained burgundy my blood-red tributaries
I don’t have enough winekeys in this house
to drown in her
so I uncork the moments one by one
swallow them in short glasses
lose coherence in the overswelling libations
pulling me into the touch of her moments
flooding back through open mouths
dripping out into intoxicated fingertips
before, overcome by the inebriation of remembering
eyelids heavy in her photographs
burned backward from brain to retina
push the warmth of her back into hands
allowing me to sleep guiltlessly
but even then, she pours herself into be
squeezes out the wine
so I wake unintoxicated
but drunk on longing for her
and a hangover of memories
I can’t forget again