Dear Alcohol

I hate you.

I hate the potency of your taste. I mix you up,

punch poured disproportionately over poison

so my friends fail to see me flinch as your burn

ignites my tongue and I forcefully swallow. I hate you

in the muddled mornings that follow. My head aches

with regret as I wake, hanging over the grime

of the toilet bowl with the nausea you invited

to infiltrate my stomach threatening

to scale my throat like it’s Mount Tambora.

“It was worth it,” we’d say, to lose ourselves in the bass

pumping deep within our bones, the booming laughter

and tone-deaf tunes reverberating off the walls

of that little club in Orlando—our second home

on those humid southern nights. Even so,

I hate you.

I hate your influence on my mother. She cut

deep and scarred wide with knives sharpened

by beer and wine. Her words were enough

without you laced intricately between, constricting

like a red-tailed boa until they oozed straight

malice. Venom she etched into my cortex

echoes—right next to the rattling of the hinges

when she pounded on my door, screaming “I hate you,”

in slurred disgust. I’d never be good enough.

My knuckles were swollen, throat tight, tears

leaking. Desperately pleading, not only to God,

but to turn eighteen and abandon this liquor store

masquerading as a home. I wonder, when she awoke,

if she thought, “it was worth it.”