Möbius Strip Me

Guy at the bar slurs, “May I buy you a drink?” My heart speaks, “Sorry, I can’t stomach a second—I’m going through a breakup.” I finger the orange slice on my Old Fashioned and wonder if I’m as porous as this peel, if one can smell my recovering essence each time life twists me into a Möbius strip of struggle. “And you can’t drink, because?” Bar man is still at it. Orange peel is still stinking of my demand for someone to heal my blue psyche. “I don’t want to get drunk, emotional, and call him.” Or do I? Möbius strip me is mixing beginnings with ends as I stir Angostura bitters deeper into Rye whiskey. “Yes,” I say to the stranger, “yes to your libation provocation.” He smiles. “And if you and I now fall in love, if you and I are to marry using money my wedding venue will not refund, if you and I are to spend happily ever after crushed in each other’s arms, fusing together, melting like this ice in my rocks—” I stop when he touches the back of my seat. “Glass, rocks glass. If you and I are to create ample perfume as our sweat serenades each other, if you and I are to hormonally stir within our corporal containers, if you and I are to birth the babies I built a nursery for who’ll dream under an alligator-themed crib mobile, then yes, let us be one.” He gets up to leave. I shout over sawdust and pool tables, “If you’re my new soul mate, if you’re my new twin flame, if you’re my next astrologically compatible adventure, if you’re to fill my insides with sweet whipped cream—” He’s already gone. Untied from my strip of despair. Finally leaving me back alone, with me, and this one glass of whiskey.

 

 

Celebrities and Such Who Married

the same person twice:

            Jean-Claude Van Damme

            Frida Kahlo, Lana Turner

            Estée Lauder, Sophia Loren

            Rodney Dangerfield, Larry

            King, Barbara Walters

            Liz Taylor, Don Johnson

            Marie Osmond, Neil Simon

            Elon Musk, Yoko Ono, Pam

            Anderson, Robert Wagner

            John Forbes Nash Jr., NeNe

            Leakes, Eminem

            Rosemary Clooney, Judge Judy

            Elliott Gould, Ben Stein

            Dionne Warwick, Milton Berle

            Dorothy Parker, Carson

            McCullers, Percy B. Shelley

and me, hopefully!

Baby, I’m no star but

                        you’re my sequel–

let’s rewind

            then

                        please

                                    press play.