Bottled Up

There’s a tequila bottle in my bedroom
— it’s stolen, as if that makes it better —
chipped and cracked and held together
by glue and memories
of the nights I baptized myself in liquor;
three flowers peek above the rim,
pink purple white,
bruised and faded around the edges,
a bittersweet kind of beautiful.

It’s a labor of love:
I scraped the stickers off
and peeled until my fingers cramped,
washed it and washed it again
and put something pretty inside,
hoping it would look nice.
And it’s funny how
something that once housed poison
can be given new life.

I washed my hands of it,
knuckles burning until the water ran clear,
a baptism long overdue,
cleared the taste off my tongue
—alcohol burns worse on the way up—
and swept up the shards,
pieced myself back together,
and it’s funny how I feel new again.