After The Bar By Cate Davis

Remember how we staggered then found our rhythm? Down the empty road the only sound our mud-caked soles scraping the pavement and the occasional flare of your cigarette. 

Your puffs were always more deliberate than mine. I thought you were trying to make a point about the serious/unseriousness nature of life. 

But still, we leaned into each other just like…best friends. 

To bed with us! All sheeted and dry thanks to me. We washed down the night with stale chocolate and flat beer. We shed our boots like corsets. We undid the other’s buttons one by one like it was just a favour. 

You passed out in ten but I couldn’t sleep so I crossed the creaking floors with impunity to the kitchen to fry some eggs to beat off my hangover just as the sun came up over the field. 

The sun sang an aria while the birds gossiped and the dandelions wept with dew. 

But I was the only one who knew. 

Cate Davis lives in Toronto where she drifts between writing and far easier activities but always ends up back at the keyboard. Cate's poems can be found in the Poetry Super Highway, Red Eft Review and Black Moon Magazine (forthcoming).