happiness is a glass of red on a school night

A Coonawarra Cabernet
tickling the nose
with a label of prose
swilling
in balloon glasses
to Billie Holiday
making
the tightest of friends
with her velvet mouth
and thirsty tongue.
A clockwise turn
of the volume dial,
a well rehearsed swing
of her wrist
to her hip
a few square metres
of privacy home
she could call her own
even if renting meant
blue tac
instead of
nail peppered walls
A flung shoe
A ripped off belt
and fling that too
a private lap dance
for the sturdy
tall
leather clad
chair in the house
a slip of a fine and dainty strap
down a shimmying shoulder
a roll down
of the stay-ups-no-more
the close echo of a belly laugh
that squeezed eyes like lemons
and drew tears like wind
with a dear friend
who’d bend
in delicious cackle agony
a full moon
spilling chalk paths
through midnight velvet sky

She held all that between her fingertips,
like green peas,
all bursty
and envy-green.
On Tuesday night
she decided to mash them all
into her creamed nutmeg sprinkled potatoes

And woke up the next day

with a nasty hangover