Whiskey Rain

Remembering him was never an easy task.

It was the sort of thing this man engaged in

When the world had finally let him be and silence

Overtook the old Victorian home around him.

Remembering the boy with the starry name

Demanded stillness, solitude, and silence.

Or else he would shatter like spider-broken glass.

.

Remembering him wasn’t an occasion but a habit,

As easy as pouring a nightcap and settling in.

He was used to this.

He had been doing this for twelve years now.

Every night, when the world began to settle,

The tall, dour man sank into a soft chair near the fire

And endeavored to remember until nothing remained.

.

He was tall but the weight of his grief thinned him out,

Turning all the elegant aspects of his countenance

Into shadows and bones, into things that decayed.

He was a shell, moving himself through life out of spite

And glaring at the world, sneering at it as though it

Had wrung the last bits of life from his starry-named lover

When he had been the one to watch him drown helplessly.

.

The black eyes closed with a strong exhale.

The whiskey was strong tonight, stronger than usual,

But it didn’t excuse the constricting snake of grief

Tightening around his throat and forcing tears to his eyes.

The glass kissed his lips and whiskey sloshed into his belly.

It didn’t quell the growing ache in his core.

Instead, he thought of the cool press of dead lips to his own.

.

His lover died brilliantly, like a star burning, burning, bursting.

He died, swallowed by the depths of a freezing lake

While black eyes looked on, blood leaking into the whites

As he lay broken on the bank, screaming himself hoarse.

He died young, deep in a lake, at the hands of an abuser

And something in the man on the shore died that day too.

Something broke never to be repaired.

.

Another swig of whiskey washed down his gullet

And the crystal tumbler exploded into stars against the brick

Hugging the crackling fire heating the room.

Red touched his cheeks, so did iridescent trails of tears

But there was still no expression gracing his features.

He was dead in the face with screaming eyes.

He was lost in the current of yesterday.