The Red Grape Lounge

Even though I’m in my thirties I still feel
Like I’m in high school. Except this isn’t school.
It’s a bar and the girls are women who can do what they want
and so can I because I am a kid in a thirty-year-old’s body

and mind.

I can sit on a stool straight like drafting class but
with my own eyes in the mirror over the bar while my cigarette, pencil-like reminds me of my self, of what I can do forever. This is my game, my life, something I have wanted since I can remember -- to be older and do older things like being here for as long as I want until the money runs out.

Just before the money disappears, before I scrounge a few bucks for the tip,
I grab hold of my glass for a final swig and beneath layers of my own fingerprints

I see images of my mother and father
dancing together in the reflections.