nights alone in dive bars watching
baseball, sipping cheap gin? I was
relieved to be alone, to loose
the vigilance I’d kept over the man
I’d lately left – would he uncoil his
impatience, his anger: not at me /
at me / later, when I thought an evening
a success, we’d relaxed a bit, but no,
he’d tell me, I monopolized that one
friend, danced too much, or maybe,
sang. Sunday brunch a ruined thing –
this café in particular, tinged with
his despair as I tried to read the paper,
sip my overpriced macchiato, watch
the city stroll by. He stared at the eggs
congealing on his sorry plate. I had
already tried saying everything.
There was nothing left. No, I wasn’t
lonely, those years after, alone on
the red-cracked bar stool. The bartenders
were hot middle-aged hipsters and I’d
chat them up a bit – Anthony Rendon
was my man on the Nationals those years –
but from what I overheard I could tell
they were jerks to the women in their lives.
In a city of $16 martinis, I was happy
for the cheap-ass booze, baseball on TV,
Mondays’ half-price pizza. I know the pathos
trope: middle-aged women drinking alone
in dive bars. But fuck that – my body was
learning relief. I had no one to watch over,
no one’s shoulders to monitor for that
slumped sad set, no sudden hard kick
of a shoe abandoned too close to the door –
shoe, mine / frozen body, mine / child-
ghost frozen when the angry dad goes
angry, me. Yes, I will have another gin
and soda. My body is my own.