Vodka

I am wearing thick, clunky shoes.
Or at least, the me I know would be wearing
thick, clunky shoes.

The warm red light of the restaurant
strives for ambience
with the false news printed
on the slick, crumpled paper
catching grease beneath my dinner.

I take pictures.
Lots of pictures.
I take pictures that I don’t remember, later,
when or why I took.
The sides of faces, billboards,
buildings bent crooked by my lens,
snapshots I place lovingly
in albums no one sees.

I remember loud glasses
and narrow eyes,
fingers knit together
with pointed chins resting snugly in the pits.

To be honest, I don’t think
it was the women’s room,
even when I did
find the door.

And to be honest
the first thing that I felt
was glamorous.

I picture my ungainly limbs
splayed out behind me
(clunky shoes included)
like some rock star god,
all fishnets and hairspray
and a tangle of bangs hanging
in clumps of well-manufactured messiness
against my cheeks.

I picture my face on tabloids
with thick liner smeared beneath my eyelids
and my mouth hanging half-agape,
squinting against the flash.

At first I don’t feel anything
but the tug,
a fist pulling hard
at the string in my stomach,
turning my insides out
with a single well-placed yank.

The inside of my nostrils sting.
(It smells
sickly in here)

I stop feeling
so Vegas
when the little strings
of spit and puke
are dangling like spider’s webbing
from the corners of my mouth:
delicately, perfectly-spherical globules
twinkling yellow and white
in the muted light.
Snot smears across the back of my hand
as I wipe them away.