My eyes click clacked
To the cling clang
Of a bottle of *** hitting marble
Ava was sitting on the bar countertop
The boy with the glasses
Folded between her spider legs
Their teeth like piano keys playing one another

She ****** his shirt
Red maraschino
Pet his cheek with her
smooth leather palm
Stroked his hair with
Comb fingers
Bejeweled with silver rings

She stretched out her vowels like taffy when she spoke
Giggles stabbing themselves into the middle of her sentences.
“I️ like the way wine makes me feel”
She purred,
Swishing the words around in her mouth before she chased them down with
Pino Gris

I’d never seen this version of Ava.
Night velvet
Black cat
Skin sheets of raw silk.
She was slippery and evasive,
Like a mermaid
Hiding behind her hair and her scales and champagne,

Because
Inside
I️ knew
She wished the boy
With the glasses and the red shirt
Was her Brooklyn boy
So she kissed him with wine lips,
The force of disappointment and pain