The Night when I talked

Only the gasoline lamp in a used liquor bottle
Showed to the stars that we existed on that
Night, in the middle of the darkness at
the border of the hills and ocean...

Accompanied by the chanting of the waves
A few steps from our shabby kiosk
And the snoring of the damn tired fellow,
My voice of inebriation was the only evidence of life
amidst those "dead to the world"
in that small village of fisherfolk.

You listened intently
To my awkward story
of the quarrels and the beatings,
the circle around my eye turning
black from purple,
guilty and remorseful.

My jaws and your eardrums working
fighting against the cold breeze piercing
while you were meta-cognitively thinking
just to wet my lips of yearning
longing to salvage
from my cynical reasoning...

When we emptied the long bottle of rum and my smoking was done,
our bodies curled oppositely on both ends of the bench.
The warmth of your feet on mine was not enough
so inside my head I whined for you to just spare me your arms.

...and then I heard your breathing
that was the lullaby for my intermittent sleeping.