Turtleneck Aa And Awareness Of Love Poem by John W. McEwers

If I am to be choked by a shirt
its arms will be wrapped 'round
my throat like your fingers
not the flaccid suffocation
of an ill-fitting hole.

I went three months without beer
when I was twenty, and it nearly killed me,
because I turned to whiskey
and you thought that was more manly.

It was more manly than turtlenecks
but they were the only clothes you ever bought me,
because taking my breath away was never enough,
and the whiskey was more awkward to swallow.

I knew I loved you the moment I saw you
and I knew soon after that you would
choke the life from me.

Now I tell people in church basements
strings of stories like these on a nightly basis
leaping from one event one memory to another
without really knowing if I'm going anywhere
but hell.

Church basement bathrooms remind me of hell.
I've written your number on all of their stalls
in the hopes a demon might fall in love.