The Boy and The Alcoholic

Another poem in my series of old poems no longer in rotation.

I wear you,
Duluth to Salt Lake,
from bathrooms to bar rooms.
I sometimes leave you at strangers’ houses
only to return for you.
I wrap my heart up tight
in your sweaters.
They’re covered in holes,
so parts of me are always exposed.
In Olympia,
I got a tattoo of your words
all over my body;
Now I’ll always remember.

On my most private of places,
I wear your brief
despondent intervals of sobriety.
Consider them my dowry.
You got rehab,
I got a body bound, mutilated
and unable to move.

You are the secret I carry.
No matter how worn,
No matter how stained;
You and I
are intertwined.