Undertow

Bottle slung against my parched lips,

deep-throated swallow, there’s a hollow

space behind my blood-shot vision.

I’m on my knees, worshipping

a toilet where my liquid guts

get flushed like yesterday

or last month. I can’t remember.

In the hallway, I stumble, fall hard

knock my teeth against floorboards.

My naked legs splayed, my naked arms splayed,

my belly wrenches and heaves spit.

Even the gods have abandoned me

lost among the half-thoughts, littering my brain.

How to unfurl this aching fist, how to quit

punching the brick-face of this tomb.

The lid closes like my eyes,

slides slowly shut, light receding

to a single slit, then darkness.

The gods say we are powerless to the pull,

the wet undertow that churns

the brown, brackish sea where open-mouthed

we gulp and swallow and gulp and swallow

until we are spat out with seaweed

and other drowned things.

A storm breaks upon my face.

Remorse is wet

and I am soaked in it.

Later, I will sleep it off again,

and wake to the liquid pull and drift,

shelled shard of a bottle

poised against my wrist.

© Ami Mattison

Flicker photo courtesy of Sister72

For Jingle Poetry Potluck