Your Fingers Grip A Bottle Poem by Josh Rodriguez

your fingers grip a bottle
that you swore to our mother

you’d abandoned approximately
a year ago along with that insatiable

will to live, that vital and visceral will
that galvanized your animal heart,

before it was decommissioned or
totally and wholly expended on an

occupation that you loathe and
a woman who did you wrong and

a world that has no sympathy for
those it leaves maltreated and exploited,

before it was enfranchised and removed
from its natural habitat, white robed in a crimson room

you are off the radar and in the fray
with a little bit of solace that you found

somewhere in the hemorrhaging night
that just cannot contain

the dawn from
pouring in like
smoke any
longer

let the dawn
pour over you
in a grey light
while the world
around you
burns

hold onto
that spark