She warns herself
to cork the wine tangling
up all her breaths.
She doesn't want to drown,
she doesn't want to guess.

But she does,
she does.

She realizes,
nauseous, breathless,
that she's stopped looking for stars
in the sky,
but has begun to search for them
in wine glasses and
a boy's eyes.
She desperately doesn't want to. Desperately.

But she does,
she does.

Her mouth is smeared with
straw-gold honesty
because in the morning
it'll be crimson again -
a scarlet as sharp as a
poison dart.
So right now, she enjoys the pale golden.
Fizzing from her mouth and
coursing through her shaking hands and
enveloping her and the lost boy beside her
like a red and blue coat that they can't shake off.
She wants to say:
This is the winter of our denial.
Of our everything and anything and whatever it is,
this thing we can't name.

But she doesn't,
she doesn't.

The Chardonnay isn't
golden enough for that.

All it can gurgle out is:
Don't do it, don't do it.
It'll mean something.

And she listens,
she listens.

She walks back out into the cold night
because she must.
And she collapses into herself
like stars and galaxies do, don't they?
In the morning, she'll paint some false sunshine
onto her face again.
And pretend she isn't bruised all over,
all red and blue,
golden and crimson.