Last Night in Japan | Original Poetry

It was just for one night
in that dimly lit izakaya
that his blood pressure was elevated to
the dizzying heights of Nanda Devi —
the snowy summit that he used to climb.

Booze blew through his nostrils
as he drank one too many shots
of sake and wrapped his arms around
a woman with an ivory face —
the white paint of which he did not peel away
with his fingertips before that night.

But the paint was peeling and
the flakes were falling
from the wall in the master bedroom that night
where his wife was still on her knees,
praying that Mr. Sakhoby will have safety
on his business trip —
she did not rest her aching joints
on satin sheets.

Hers was not the only sheets left untouched,
for out in the streets that very night
was his firstborn — and only — son
biking around in the back alleys
with his newly adopted blood brothers
and getting his first taste of ecstasy —
to jump out of the marbled cell and fly away.

Neither Mrs. nor Sakhoby Jr. knew
how in that night his blood pressure shot up
in a flurry of ecstatic kisses, and how
in the land where the sun rises he could do nothing
but leave before the cock crowed.

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This was an original poem exploring the intersection between family disintegration and substance abuse.

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