What Remains in the Glass

I sit beside the drink

as if it has asked me to stay,

gold and still breathing, a small captured sunset

held in a glass too cheerful

for the room around it.

The wall is pale and tired,

creased like something old that has heard too much

and answered nothing.

Even the table looks quiet, the kind of quiet

that settles after people leave without saying goodbye.

Next to me, the black candle wears its white skull

like a warning or a memory.

Crossed bones, fixed grin, that blunt little sermon

about how everything bright is only borrowing time.

The silver stand droops with purple beads,

tiny hanging things that remind me of tears

trying to become ornaments.

They catch the light but do not soften it.

They only make the sadness look deliberate.

I keep staring at the glass,

its painted mountains, its hot-air balloon,

its promise of distance.

Long way home, it says, and I believe it.

Some places are too far

even when they are yours.

Some journeys end with you standing still,

holding what remains of an evening

you cannot return to.

There is foam clinging to the rim like hesitation.

There is condensation, faint and fading,

the brief evidence that something cold was once here.

I think that is what I am now.

A vessel with a little amber left, a decorated thing

trying to look travelled,

while the candle beside me

keeps its dead face turned

in my direction, and says nothing

I do not already know.