—I’M SHAKING, BUT ONLY INSIDE

  

It feels like a death threat come to fruition when you wake up on the apartment floor, not for the first time, your hair and cheek stuck as if glued there, a tooth or teeth perhaps broken, something sharp as a crystal shard or car key stuck in your throat, a small lake of sticky scarlet-plum circled under your chin and throat, and from this angle you not only see cat legs sash shay, pageant-like, by a haphazard necklace of nearby broken glass, but you remember now that your wife is due to fly back today, if, in fact, it is Thursday and sometime in summer, bringing her We need to talk fodder along, maybe for one final conversation until she splits permanently, and as you carefully twist your rubber face toward detachment, you swat the bloody, crepe-like flap away and tell yourself as you always do to Think positive, that if she leaves you as she should, you’ve got nothing but highways of freedom ahead, legions of bottles you can undress and drink, emptying their dreams into your anemic capillaries with assured deliverance until you are restored, woozily content, a man-made boat bobbing on a sea of bourbon and booze, promises tucked in your socks.