The rose petals in my cocktail
Somehow found a way
To colour your romantic young lips;
I longed to match them with mine,
Bloom a field of thorned kisses between us.
Between the half pints, the martini, and the free shot,
The rest of your face is a blur
But I cannot forget the right side of those thin lips
Curving upward as you spoke,
As you listened to my stories
About a land far away,
With your blue eyes locked on mine.
I rambled and you smiled.
You couldn’t understand my love for the city,
But you were glad I chose Dublin that night.
You asked questions and I didn’t understand
The implications until
The morning when I was sober.
The more I drank the more I wanted you,
But they closed down the bar
And your friends disappeared
And my mouth grew dry as we spoke.
The last ones in,
I’d lost track of time and we were out on the street.
I waited for you to ask me along
But they took me by the arm
And I slept in the bathtub of my hotel room,
Never knowing more than your name,
Never remembering more than your charming drunken smile
And the heat of your breath on my neck,
Inches away,
But never touching.
Written the morning after a drunken night in Dublin that I spent with three local lads, one of whom I quite fancied. The night could have ended so very differently but circumstances prevented it.