After the Festival

All day I had been smiling.
I had been laughing.
I had been dancing.

Drinking vodka and soda
at a festival celebrating wine.

By midnight
I had had enough.

I left my friends
at Britannia Arms.

Walked home alone.

The tents that held
paintings, sculptures,
spicy sauces, salves,
were now sleeping shapes
along the empty streets.

The ocean was speaking.

I could not see it.

With vodka in my veins
I stood listening
to its ancient argument:

come in, go out,
come in, go out.

Something happened then.

Call it God.

Call it inebriation.

Call it the moment
a woman understands
how much of her life
she’s spent
studying the faces of others
to know who to pretend to be.

In that moment
there was no need to smile.

No one to be charming for.

No one to convince
that I was happy
to be there.

There was only the dark,
the sleeping shapes,
the open sea
beyond them,

and me,
drunk and alone.

Something holy
moved through me.

I could not tell
if it was grace
or the absence
of everyone else.

The ocean kept breathing
as it had before me,
as it would after me.

In that darkness
I heard a voice.

You may stop now.

You may stop.

Stop.