the Sweetest Thing

New York Yankees, 10th inning and winning.

I can't even remember the rules of the game.

People walk past the bar, glass doors open, and oogle the flat screen tv. At home, my walls are paper thin and I am frustrated. In the street corner, Mexicans stand around and hope for work. It's a brutal world and minimum wage a luxury. Obama wins the Nobel peace prize; I don't know what's heads and what's tails. Over frozen margaritas, sad sad stories are told and I am only a little wiser: Live each day as if it is your last. and: you never escape yourself. My hands smell of limes pushed into the bottle, and I wonder if I will remember, in the hangover.

It's well past midnight and I've turned into a pumpkin. My head spins. I begin to suspect it is not, after all, the alcohol.