2016, Bar in Evansville, IN

The air is hot smoke in virgin lungs
as “Can’t Feel My Face” threatens

to break ear drums. Dirty feet pulse
in tippy-tap circles and hands raise

up to someone’s Heaven. My drink
teeters on the edge of it’s plastic cup

as gravity is denied by young vanity.
Hands graze into their own hair,

showing off shoulders of steal. Sour
tightens my throat as you enter. Four

or five bars line this street. Inevitable,
really, like us. My best friend glues

himself to my thigh, wraps an arm
at my side as a concoction of support.

He’ll fuck me long after midnight.
Tomorrow, Grandpa will die. I’ll drink

red wine in the cream living room
as his body is rolled by. I will not watch.

Tonight, his blood is still unholy.
Strained speakers scratch sweltered

linoleum. Someone will mop after doors
lock. This will all be rewritten, again.

You’ll go home, hands tight in somebody
else’s hair. Her spit dangles on your lip.

Tonight, I think everyone who’s tasted
you must miss you in their own way.

Sam Frost is a writer who constantly digs her past up and spews it onto the page, spends too much time and money drinking kombucha, and is always craving fast food breakfast. Find more work at The Hellebore, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Floodlight Poetry, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @sammfrostt.