Brut Writing

I drink from a tin can colored gold, decorated with green ferns and floating navy blue rimmed bubbles. In the interim between normalcy and the headache, I find my words more easily.

I float in the pool leaning on a blue bed of air, reading someone else’s stories and drinking a half bottle of brut from this can, and in between the reading comes the thinking, the good kind.

I watch my skin turn an angry pink in spite of the slathered-on sunscreen, and I dip my elbows in the water, keeping the book spine above the wet surface line. I think, I should get out of here and let my fingers dance on the keyboard. The things I write in my head fade so quickly. They come to me in private, they whisper when I’m alone.

By the time I dry off and unfold my aluminum computer, the only thing I can remember is that I had something to say.

The golden aluminum can sits quietly by. My head is growing fuzzier. I sigh. Something made me get up, lift the full weight of myself out of the water, drip across the burning pavement, wrap a thin towel around my damp suit, and walk back inside to sit soggy bottomed on a hard chair.

Is this how they felt when they drank, I wonder, thinking of famous old writers. But then again, they were all alcoholics and I suspect spent more time with headaches than words, but what do I know? We read their books now, and they died along with their damaged livers.

When I die, all the words will be dust in my brain. No one will ever hear this poetry besides me…