Red Wine

“Here’s to red wine stains on your pages of poetry, here’s to money in your pocket, here’s to women in your bed and here’s to food in your satchel.” We cheered to every allowable occasion until we drank the entire bottle of wine. “What say we find us another bottle of red?” Miguel agrees as we enter into the evening of bat filled skies. Our bench is vacant in the center of town. Save for the only acquaintance that of pigeon shit. I always carry a corkscrew in my satchel along with my writings and anticipations. The bottle open and breathing on the cobblestones at our feet, Miguel commences reading me one of his poems about the sadness of losing his right to fatherhood.
I write of a young boy living with no father
The one I was forced to leave.
He sits sadly on a corner
With each breath he takes
It’s the sadness that I breathe.
His face covered by dirt and blankness
with no one to throw the ball.
He’s the one I was forced to leave behind
The one I’ll never rescue from a fall.