If you took a sip of me today

you’d realize how flat I’ve become.

“Where’s the fizz?” you’d protest,

“Where’s the bubble, the spray, the play?”

You can’t send me back to whence I came,

the kitchen is closed,

the busboys went home,

the fan above the stove cut quiet.

We stand in the light

from the cracked refrigerator door,

a curtain of soft night light

breaking in through the window behind us.

All the world is quiet,

the mice in the back yard

have raised their whiskered snouts to attention

as a possum passes by like a ghost.

I reach for the place

where your heart thumps wild,

foraging in the moonlight for clues

of who we’ve become:

the shake of a pandemic,

the swirl of lockdown and revolution,

the clinking of gun shots round the way,

the condensation of uncertainty

wet in our hands.

We remembered:

You stayed up all night

with whiskey courage

and I lay sweating in bed,

the morning not arriving fast enough.

Our town was on fire.

We did the best that we could.

And realizing now

–years later —

the fizz

and the pop

were now gone.