Education is Living with a Drinker

Everyone has an opinion about what one should do

You arrived in the crowd of yourself. A sea anemone waiting to reach into the party for the pick of the girls.

That’s how we know how a night turns to mourning — we’ve seen this undoing a thousand times. Embarrassment so often our evening companion.

Jim Beam. Jack Daniels, refills of champagne, the glamour starts in a wave. How I died watching them catch on, faces turn and droop — the sidelong glance, the questions:

Is he with you? How does a man do this to his family? But he has so much, surely…the trailing off. Then the next phase — solutions. What if? He should know when to stop. The anger, the outrage.

Finally, a circle appears, a wide berth, where he stands, a single tear lost in an empty cargo hold & you wonder how anyone could be so alone. You remember you still love your father. The clock chimes. A dozen souls worked through five stages of grief in the solitude of an hour. Best take the old man home their education over, for now.

Copyright Simon Heathcote