Passages Poem by Leah Browning

While you’re in the restroom
I eat your potato
and let the waitress take
your plate, remembering
earlier times, before I knew
how to drive, after a restaurant

just like this, realizing too late,
helplessly, that you were drunk
at the wheel. Now you stick
to coffee and water. Still, the same
rush of relief when we get home,
knowing that we’ve averted disaster,

or avoided it, because of course
we never stop circling it, like water
around a drain.