The moment I walk out of my bedroom, I smell the unmistakable odor of alcohol. I could pick this smell out of a hundred other smells, this one would always stick out. It’s not only alcohol though. It’s the mix of a thousand cigarettes that have been put out in an empty beer bottle, and the vague savor of last night’s junk food. Probably pizza, but it could have been fries and I wouldn’t have known.
I’m trying to find a place on the kitchen counter where I can put my glass on. It takes some shoving dishes, but there it is, 4 inches of a dusted counter where I can pour myself a drink. I open the fridge, and try to find some juice in between the bottles of beer and cheap wine. Just as I’ve found the last bottle of apple juice, half empty and almost gone bad, daddy comes out of his bedroom. His hair stood up as if he was Johnny Bravo, and if only the resemblance stopped there… Daddy stumbles his way to the couch and lets himself fall onto it with a loud ‘thud’. ‘Good morning princess.’ he says. ‘Good morning daddy,’ I reply. ‘Did you sleep well? And how is your head, does it still hurt?’. But it was like talking to a wall, daddy was already snoring on the couch, radiating so much alcohol that I could have gotten drunk just from standing there.
I always thought it was a wonder that our couch hadn’t collapsed yet. It was old, and had so much creaks in the leather you’d think it was a pattern. In the middle there was a dent, right in the place where daddy falls asleep. He’s actually way too tall to be lying on a couch that small, but it’s all that fit in his little mobile home. Right across it was an old big tv, which was only used to check the 8 pm weather, and put on his favorite music dvd. There was also a kind of fancy chair, but most times my brother already claimed it. When you lean back, there appears this little thing where you can lay your feet on.
I knew this chair must has come with the mobile home itself, it’s a pretty expensive chair. But with this chair taken too, all I can do is get a chair from our little square dining table to enjoy my apple juice as a 2pm breakfast.
I'm sorry this is more of a story than a poem, but I thought I'd share it anyways.