Читать книгу Forgiveness Parade - Jeffrey McDaniel - Страница 11

THE FIRST ONE

Who knows what led me there — a twelve-year-old,

leading my eight-year-old brother and his overnight guest

into the one clean room of that four-story brownstone

and plunging into the booze while our parents slept.

Maybe it was genetic curiosity, colliding with vodka,

a fifth of cheap Russian, and scorching a freeway to our guts,

as we quivered on the oriental rug, passing the bottle

beneath the fancy paintings that held the walls up.

Consequence was a planet whose orbit we couldn’t respect.

When the clear stuff got finished, red wine came next,

with little bits of the cork I wedged down with a knife

bobbing like chaperones forced to walk the plank.

The room began flipping like a pancake. We dropped

glass anchors from that third story porthole,

transforming the neighbors into a frenzy of phone calls.

Who knows what emotions my parents were wearing,

but whatever they said didn’t make any sense,

as we wiped our lips and spiraled into black.