You are here
The Morning After
When I come awake there’s no gradual incline from a hazy world of dreams.
It’s as if one minute I were dead and the next I am alive, the wall too close to my face
and my whole body aware of itself. I’m fully clothed, even wearing my shoes.
I can’t remember getting to bed, can’t even remember getting home.
There’s a pressure on my bladder and this, I think, is what has forced me awake.
Light leaks in around the curtains and as I struggle with my pocket to find my phone
I close my eyes and smile, the warm fug of alcohol still clouding my brain.
It’s half past six in the morning
and as I make my way to the off licence the store fronts rattle coldly in the wind.
I’m aware of the tiny little voice trying to talk me out of getting drunk again.
But I ignore it, as I so often do, till the voice is drowned in Gin and the music
is pounding, deafening all thought, till the morning arrives proper
and I start to wonder who I can tap for money, taking this brilliant, extrovert character
out into the world, laughing and camping it up,
till I run out of money or stimulants and crawl home to bed.
Till I struggle with the fear that this time I really will die in my sleep,
my heart shouldn’t be pounding that hard in my chest.
Till I sleep that fitful sleep and wake.
Wake to a week of recovery, before I go and do it all over again.
Tuesday 19th of February 2008
by P. A. MORBID
