Late Wine Nights

Ezlick Cuicar Rios

It’s an armistice for living. 

Glasses of wine served at the 

hour of the ghosts, 

soft music plays and fall zephyr 

soothes us like a lullaby.  

The moon is our witness. 

My friend gives a toast  

to unwanted survival. 

I speak of bitterness and  

contentment. Drunkness makes rare truths  

come out of  

my mouth, those that have been  

closed off by barbed wire. 

I weep, like a widow that lost her lover, 

grieving for things I never had. 

Death would be kinder, to someone  

like us, that carries like Atlas, 

holding the weight of the heavens; 

A punishment fit for the unruly, bound 

to an unwanted task.  

Bubbling under my skin, buzzing  

like flies around a rotten corpse. 

I try to claw them out,  

She holds my fingers. I make her bleed instead.  

There’s a fear of confession, 

of the reaction of beings. Vulnerability  

is terrifying, of losing my footing and falling to 

the depths of the unraveling. 

Intoxication loosens my grasp on 

premeditated thoughts—I try  

to take over again,  

but it's futile. 

Love feels like a ruse. I want to love, 

but I am incapable of such. 

Rotten walls decay, as I finish  

my bottle of fermented grapes. 

How can the shattered  

be worthy of love?  

She calls love masochistic. That 

for us, those severed, love is painful.  

It always will be. 

She also names it beautiful—a pain  

that explodes and ravages our insides. 

Blazing, suffocating, and it burns with pleasure. 

Oh, how I wish life would be merciful.  

But humans are not meant to see life 

without pain. Another moscato is opened  

and poured in my glass. 

And so we shall, my friend and I, 

drown our sorrows for one night, 

to raise white flags for a moment of peace 

and hope for a kinder tomorrow.