By Katelynne Davis

The memory of you – as I am walking up the stairs I lead you – smells, faintly, of white whiskey
The kind I tasted for the first time, with you
but not tasting you
Those lips were on the cup that poured into mine, left on the dresser in my room for a day afterward
Smelling still of what I threw up the morning after, finally grateful you hadn’t stayed
The two bottles are half-empty on my shelf
I’ll have to fill them again with what scraps of you I can find
Maybe just the fireflies in Congress Park
Though, while a half-full glass of dead lanterns make an apt metaphor,
I’ll leave the corks out
Spoiling the spirit, but
the bottles and the rest of this inconsequential litter on the shore
will be swallowed by no whale

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Photo by Katelynne Davis