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.