SUGAR WATER

Sugar water,
The stuff they always put in my bottle
Whenever there wasn’t anymore milk.
I remember shaking my bottle
Like a rattle
To see how empty it was.
And then looking up to full moon faces,
But the smiles were the half moons
That I always searched for.
Nevermind the other drunks.
They are see-thru.
Just their anger appears to us.
A black-outline.
Like Taurus.
I remember the smell
Of their liquor
(The death breath)
---A vapor.
Sometimes they would knock me over.
And I fell like so many other stars.
It is no wonder
That I never died before!
Falling down the basement stairs,
Into a different atmosphere.
Many moons
With many different care givers.
All because of a mom
Who never wanted to be there.
I looked towards the hills for her
And even searched the cosmos,
But all I found were shadows
And a lot of black holes.
Often times people
Just left me in a walker
Or a highchair.
I was Sky Woman’s son.
But when she fell she disappeared.
I had nothing to hold on to.
---Only air.
Then came the nighttime beasts.
Always crashing around
Like thunder.
Throwing bottles of beer
Hunting each other
It is very clear, Orion.
---The presentiment.
A breakdown!
Over six hundred years.
But I was too young
To stop anything.
A starling.
With just a walker.
Maybe they’ll walk it off.
Just a highchair.
Maybe they’ll never reach me there.
But the fowl comments
Always showered from their mouths
And the choking smoke
Would always find me out.
And when the booze turned them sour.
---They’d offer me sugar water.
So that I’d only taste the sweet sweet,
Of their milky ways.
Never mind that they are gone
In the hot sober day.
Just like mom,
Like dad.
I am the son they've never seen,
The son they've never had.

Copyright YellowMedicineReview 2007.