It’s nice they have the bags now, though. The
Ones you put everything but the bottle in, and microwave
It for a few minutes until anything persisting (like an errant
Flake of fat, or apathy) would be handled with the
Most delicate of nuclear disintegration. (Once, I forgot
To rinse and left a little bit too much on the fragments
I had readied; a lesson unrevisited).
There’s a fragrance
To the act of bottle-washing, unrelated to the contents, or amount.
Imagine the sweet bite of a moment caught in your throat,
Dancing in a kitchen full of torn paper (because of course she’s Elsa).
There’s something dripping off the kitchen chair, it looks like water,
And the top of Flat Rock Dam; we’d walked the mile and a half
A few times, ultimately ending in the foundational outline of
The remnants of a mill (the larger structure further up the hill
Displayed the fury and the passion of a chaotic, golden, younger
Age).
We dared ourselves to make the risky transit, and in the middle
We would sit and slide.
At the bottom, the force of water and its falling
Made the whole of me (in just three inches of ice water) afraid.
The sign said don’t or surely we will,
then we did and they didn’t,
so we stayed.
I think it’s juice; the apple or the grape.
I’m not sure if we have the white
Or red, but
Clemmy said she wants to try them both and mixed.
I say, “White Zinfandel, or Provencal rose?” then (sneering through her ears)
She walks away.
And once again,
I taste the burn of early twenties
Ignorance: what is pride when
I can make the foolest of myself,
And never hide.
The bottles sat before, stagnating, collecting soil and infection,
Soaking somewhere out of socket.
Now they dry on a shelf
Designed specifically for this, almost aging.
Then give me all our pride
And shame and worry (cloaked), and
I’ll emerge elf-actualized and
Oaked.