Poem #19: The Little Deaths

She's heard that the closer you are to bliss, the closer you come to death
and she's always been one to test the theories that entice her.
That's why you'll find her on the stool at 2 pm, readying herself
for a marathon run through the bartender's book.
By 5, she's not even close to quitting time; she's still got miles to go.
She's the one who'll be dancing alone by the jukebox,
shouting for the nearest person to come have some fun with her
a little too desperately; she's the one who'll sidle up next to you
like she's known you all of her life. She's the one who will tell you secrets.
They come tumbling over her lips from some forgotten place
and they evaporate like hot alcohol on her breath
but that's precisely the point. She expunges them to kill them,
to send them out of their host where they won't hope to survive
but, and here's the worst part, they always do.
Just long enough to crawl back to the stranger's apartment
she finds herself in at noon, her head pounding with the hard work
of last night's forgetting. They lodge themselves unseen, right where they were
and they fill her with an animal's sudden need
to brave the blinding sun, to seek out her territory's bar,
to eat pretzels to slow the tequila's sink into her bloodstream.
She drinks, she dances, she talks, she kills
night after night after night, never understanding how she destroys
the wrong parts of herself every time.