The Woman Who Works In The Bar

Your beauty will run out, but you don’t even know it.
You like coming back to the bar you drank at for years
encouraging your raging alcoholism,
the sobers thought you were such a drag,
but you were the life of the scene with the liquor--
it’s just like walking in that old bar again,
faces lighting up as they turn to look at you
your innards turning soft as you feel recognized
and recognized
and recognized again.
Of course, you’d come back
for this type of love, you’d do anything.

You say, “If I quit drinking and just come up missing,
what will they do without me?”
And we pretend that they’d miss you,
imagine situations where they’d talk about what a great man you were,
how they wish they could slap a five down for one more drink for you,
offer you the warmest stool with the yellow coosh oozing out the side,
we pretend, because it feels just as good as the numbness from a shot,
“I better go back one more time, you know--just to tell them I won’t be back.”

I comply because I don’t know any better,
and in the morning, you’re asleep in the bar waiting for drinks to be served
for you, a tweed coated party with patches on the elbow,
a gentle glow from the window sills kind of get together--

“Why do the dry ones hate me so much?” You ask, one night
you managed to stagger home and these were the words
that spilled with drool from your lips as you collapsed,
“What did I do to make them be so sad to me?”
I felt for you then, held you like a child, pulled you close,
Told you that they just didn’t understand your world,
and we pretended that they were always at your door
knocking to come in and just have a mug of beer,
we fabricated and image that they just didn’t know how to fit in
that they were search for the answer from you,
“I’d let them in,” you say fading out, aspiration so shallow,
“I’d always let them in, and I’d always buy them…..”
breathing, breathing, “…..another drink.”

How cold they were not to love you back when you needed it,
I know, you’re a drunk--but you were so naïve and trusting
and you gave your feelings like tiny little presents to people
who slid them away in their coat pockets to not remember later
and let them wash so recklessly--
How cold they were,

Let’s just get your jacket on you, baby
I can’t stand to see you shaking like this,
C’mon, I’ll walk with you--
“You’ll walk with me?!” Your face lights up,
“Yeah, we’re going to get you there safely tonight,
and they’re all there waiting for your arrival,
reminiscing about your stories, thinking of what you’ll tell them tonight,
the little candles on the tables were just lit, and I think they’ve swept the floor
we’re going to make sure you get there alright--
C’mon baby.”
My arm around your waste, yours around my shoulders--trying to stay steady
I think that this is exactly how lovers walk, so passionately intertwined

In front of the bar I open the door and heavy lidded bastards regard you,
dropping greasy shot glasses, heads hitting counter tops
candles smoking black as wicks drown in their own wax,
you interact with the smog in the bar so graciously, my love
This is exactly how it is to be in love, a sickly waste land constructed
and decorated into a delicate, heart warming dream.

I sit to the side and try not to cry, for every sweet and gentle lost boy
and I just wait for the next man who needs a lover,
and a vision to last the rest of the night.