She is a siren in a bottle. A liquid, syrup with layers of flavour, touches of fruit, the vessel of grape, and the chilled bottle conducts the heat from my hand. I am surrounded by open-ness, yet this thing is closed to my senses, until the sweet aroma interacts with my nose and rests on my tongue before splashing down my throat on the way to my liver.
The sun is bright, it is Friday, work is over, and I'm surrounded by fast friends and long friends. One glass follows another, and I've missed her bitterly. People can be wankers about wine, the same way they can be wankers about coffee, but absence, and abstinence, in this case, did make my heart grow fonder.
Another splash in the glass, using the second that came with the bottle, even though I know it is just for me, my company unwilling to partake in the nectar I selected, instead opting for their own journeys.
We talk. We eat. I observe, through increasingly deteriorating senses, the beauty and joy in the kinship and connectedness with others. For those vague, indistinct moments while the siren sings to me, killing brain cells, and putting my liver to over-drive, the world is a place that isn't full of contempt, horror, and inequity.
Instead it is a place where the oldest social lubricant we know nurses me into a place of warm comfort, a place, where, surrounded by my nearest and dearest, I feel, and can truly express just how very much I adore, cherish, and love them all - for their own reasons.
I remember the warmth of her embrace, and the embraces she makes me deliver to my loved ones. Then, along comes her twin, the second bottle, and I know it can only get better. It doesn't - it gets blurrier, more indistinct, full of haze, with a light twirl and a staggered stumble to the urinal.
Some food acts as a stabiliser, and the bottle yearns to be completed, but it is a struggle I can only endure alone. I pay back her painful song the following day, but she leaves me with a smile, a memory of warmth, love, and joy - and a warning to not disrespect her so again.
It was five months since she last rested in my belly and on my breath, let it be another five years.
