Tequila Sunrise by Kelly I. Hitchcock

The elixir that brought us together
Separates me from the ones who matter,
The ones I shun to see you every night
Through the distorted gray
Of the bottom of a pint glass

Each squat jigger of spirits
Takes me further from me, closer to you,
The chum who’ll hold my hair
Away from my vacant face as I vomit,
And welcome my fading into bilious sleep
On your once-black, petrified sofa,
And offer a secondhand shoulder
For me to cry spiked tears on

But whom I’ll never see in the warmth of sunlight,
Not even through bleary, next-morning eyes,
Or touch without the cold of a rocks glass
Still damp on the palms of my weak hands,
Or receive comfortably to anything greater
Than the most insignificant of events

Which we share every night
As we meet under the glow of neon
Where we’ll drink ‘til our blood
Is as thin as our friendship, that’s
As empty as the glass we slam down
On the sodden formica we lean against
Instead of the people who remind us
Our affection is as fake as we are to each other.