Editor's Pick Feature Poetry

I Will Not Drink

 

I will not drink

on my twenty-first birthday.

My uncle picked up a Coke-

and-rum in 1993

and has yet to put it down. 

Fingers melted into glass.

I cut myself back

to one cup of coffee a day,

sometimes. 

My mother becomes quiet

when my brothers’ chug

beer on family vacations. 

They hold their cans

like my grandfather, 

American sniper steadiness. 

 

My father wants to take us

to Las Vegas next autumn

to celebrate my new legal right,

but I know I would stand, 

sober, in a neon corner. 

Cash tucked in my pocket. 

Bubbled water in hand. 

Studying the red-faced images

of who I could be

if I just grew up. 

 

My grandfather died drunk,

and fell backwards from a tree.

I imagine my bruised grandmother 

cheering

over his pomegranate spilled insides.