There Goes Another Night

     Trying to keep the lock silent, as I open our door, I tiresomely stroll into the dark apartment. The quiet silence of the television broadcasting the news across her face is the first sight I see. In her normal chair, where day after day I see her waste her existence, I find her laid out and reclined in a similar situation as yesterday. After throwing my keys on the same hook, by the same door, I drag my feet to the usual pile of blankets balled up on the living room floor.
I grab the load of warmth, that’s rolled together like curls of her dark hair, and with a familiar gentle loft, of the checkered-patterned quilt, I swirl it over her, making sure the cold is well defended against tonight. While I toss the next blanket across her somber grin, I tilt my head low and glance at the bottle of gin wavering from her loose fingertips. “There goes another night,” I thought to myself, and then whispered it into her ear. With a cloudlike kiss of an angel I tap my lips to her cheek and tuck her flowing hand away from the grip of gin, but only dreadfully too short lived.

When I grab her wrist, the bottle falls and rolls underneath the kitchen table. Before fetching the capless glass, I lift the shelter of her bed and place her idle hand beneath the layered covers. I hear her exhale quietly, like the bitter air squeezing from the cracked window. As I place another kiss upon her soft lips and back away with a frowned face, I close my heartfelt eyes. I then find myself on hands and knees, thinking a prayer I’ve found myself reciting time and time again.

“Sorry Lord, please forgive me because I only pray for the selfish redundant wish of my love getting rid of her thirst, one you’ve heard before. I know that these are my own troubles and the will that has been bestowed upon me was ignorantly wasted, but if there was ever a time I needed a prayer to be answered… I’m okay with where I'm at, and if you could only allow her to see that, then maybe tomorrow, she will be free of her sin.”

That thought swallows through my head like that bottle of gin rolling free and I grab the bare fifth setting it on the empty table waiting for a reason to live. With a gripped neck of the bottle and a melancholy heart I gulp on top of my shallow stomach, breathing deep the burning of the last few drops.

My head, hanging low, as I glance at the moonlight glimmering on a picture mantle; my eyes limp over her throne and sitting in a frame, is my heart holding my queen. I remember every reason I find myself in this position and I go lay in my vacant bed, happily to dream of my framed heaven for the rest of my days. “Her escape has always been found in a bottle and me, all I need is her smile,” these are the last thoughts as my shirtless body hits the king sized bed, exhausted again.