Bliss

A whiskey too many and suddenly I am lost in a moment where my grandfather is still singing to the bees as he gardens and my grandmother is still reading on the porch as the daylight fades and my sister is still laughing at the way the birds dance in the wind and my dog is still sleeping in the shadow of the peach-pink sunset, and my life now still seems many lives away.

My grandparents never did say that they loved me

But, once, on a full-mooned night in June, I drunkenly destroyed their kitchen and all of their hand-painted plates that they had collected over the years, and when my grandpa saw the mess, he said, “thank god you are finally home.”

I wish I could drift through these memories forever.

It’s strange the way the past always visits through whiskey, like an old friend that I never want to see. For once, though, I decide to catch up.