Broken Bottle

by ETHAN VIETS-VANLEAR

Leaving

I can’t remember where I woke up. But I know wherever it was I was being asked to leave. It could have been the last car of a municipal train. Or maybe at the crib of a disparate lover who has roommates. I’ve been wrestling with the question of it for 40 minutes. Five different outfits and three different addresses floating through my head like a merry-go-round of green canopied twoflat Chicago brownstones and tattered selvage denim jeans. All ending with me. Looking down at an almost empty beer bottle in my hand and then up at someone so mad at me that I have to leave. Now.

The roommates wanted you to go cause you were big mad and, according to them, acting a little scary. The conductor wanted you to leave because you didn’t pay a fare and, according to them, “trains aren’t free.” The lover has another hookup imminently approaching, or has a job at least—basically has something more important to do than me. Which seems kind of trite. I mean, first of all, I hardly slept, stuck between a rock-hard couch cushion and a watermelon squishmellow. At a friend’s place or at least a place that wasn’t your home. Drool pooling on the couch. Taking up four of the seats on the packed train car. Black ripped jeans pulled down to your ankles and a frayed sweater wrapped completely around your head.

Beginnings often happen in that sweet spot of leaving. A request to egress you begrudgingly oblige. Instead of leaving, I guess I could have stayed. Engaged in some

Breakfast Dialogue

They notice that I’m angry over toast. They
start tapping their butter
knife on the thick glass table.
I bristle.
They let out a razor sharp sigh.
I chuckle.
“What’s wrong?” they ask.
I never felt like I needed to explain why I was
upset over yogurt.
“Why are you mad?” Overnight oats,
they ask between spoonfuls over and over. Little
pieces of raspberry falling off of their lips.
I lick mine.
I shrug.
I nod, lowkey twice.
I body language 70 percent.
Lean my chair back until its front legs are off the
ground pointing towards the thick oak front
door.
I finish my beer.
Another one appears in my hand.
I leave.
Go down 3 flights of stairs 2 steps at a time.
I’m not gonna explain why I’m mad
fuming tea kettle. 
I’m just gonna leave. 
Now they have to wonder about my anger all day
and I like the thought of me storming round
and round their head.

Happy Hour

I feel like I have the right to make my anger
someone else’s.
Piss wherever I want to.
I pull my pants up past my ankles.
Piss off whoever I want to.
Deface and destroy.
“It’s just changing the color of a 3D shape”
I think to myself as I paint a beer bottle on the
side of a church.
I can graffiti whatever I want to,
and I’m pretty sure God doesn’t really live here,
but I can’t draw straight lines while holding
this beer.
I drop it on the ground.
It shatters.
I scream.
Another one appears in my hand.
Already opened, the same color as the
cobblestone alley I walk down.
It tastes too neutral to be evil.
I think as I walk under an EL stop water droplet
flies off a passing train dripping directly into
my drink.
It does too much to me to be useless.
I swirl it round and round my mouth
then I spit.
I’m way too drunk to be this angry.
I break a beer bottle against the thought in my
head.
Another one appears in my hand.

I used to think me being mad was about them. 
Those motherfuckers. 
That wall that had it coming.
It was asking to get sprayed.
That lover.
That cop that was driving down that one way.
That stranger.
That beer that just reappeared in my hand.
It was asking to be drank.
THAT bop on 101.1 that the jesuits own.
Now after an hour or so of praying to the
radio mad and hearing nothing back.
I know this anger is mine and mine alone.
Static.
That’s why I hide a beer bottle in my grin, in my
goatee, in my glove compartment, in the ice in
an empty glass in my side console ringing out
so crisply.
Resonance. 
I don’t owe this anger to anyone, but myself.
And as soon as I think that I do, I need a drink.
Another beer appears in my hand.

I spin the Bottle. Block the sidewalk.
Double park the car, badly.
Kiss the thick oak door of the bar, tenderly.
I know what’s given to me is
harpooning a local to the wall.
That means they know
this
is what I do instead of therapy.
I finish my drink.
Cash tip.
Another beer appears in my hand.
I didn’t know why I was so mad at first but now I
do and I’m mad because I understand.

Dive Bar

Just ran into my dad at a local band’s show at one of my favorite bars and he’s with his newest girlfriend and now I’m nauseous, and she’s blonde. He smiles, exposing razor sharp teeth and grabs both my shoulders with his hands. I feel like a small rodent in the vice grip of an eagle. His bald head is shining like a disco ball. My forehead twinkles with nervousness. My beer starts sweating. The bottle slips through my fingers and breaks, beer running rivulets through the brown eyed wooden floor boards. They look like they’re crying. He looks away in embarrassment, the blonde doesn’t even bat an eye, she barely holds back a scoff.

I excuse myself. Scurry away like a rat across the wet floorboards the color of tar. Exit stage left, beelining to the bathroom, passing through a mosh pit. My shoelace is undone, it’s caught by a steel toe boot that spins me around and around. I puke a couple handfuls of iron nails out as I barrel through the sweaty leather wall and past the bathroom door. Grabbing the aluminum bar in the handicap stall, crying blue eye liner on to the linoleum. Looking down at the teal sliding between the off white tiles. Out of the corner of my eye I see something hopping towards me on the dive bar bathroom floor through the azure tear puddles. A date rape drug folded into an origami frog. I immediately kiss it, rip it open, do it all.

Ribbit.

I turn into a princess. A man walks in that didn’t know you can hang. He turns into a scorpion. I see red. A beer appears in my hand. I break it and stab him in the neck with the thick glass. Another beer appears in my hand. The dark red blood begins to pool on the linoleum tiles. A worm hole opens up in the handicap stalls wall. I climb through and leave, quickly.

The bar screams my name. I’m next up on Karaoke. I’m so nervous my beer is sweating bullets. I sing “Back to Black,” but this time I mean it. The sweat from me and my beer begins to fill up the room, it mixes with the blood, eye liner, and beer on the floor. Everyone’s boots are ruined. I exit stage right sopping wet. Looking through the beer bottle like a kaleidoscope. I flush down through it out onto the grey of a western avenue street gutter. It breaks. Another bottle appears in my hand.

Ex’s Crib

I try to order an uber but my phone screen is
bone broth and the letters won’t stay still.
Chicken noodle soup. My fingers are soaking wet.
I lean on the north side of the tree and grow more
and more anxious.
I wipe my hands off on the moss and walk north
instead.
I try to look up at the street signs but every time
I do water falls from an air conditioner unit
right into my eye. After the 3rd time I stop
trying.
I sense there’s a couch nearby that I have woken
up on before.
I count the footsteps it takes to get there
using fast food restaurants and graffiti tags as
landmarks: 
left at burger king, right at the throwup, right at
the floater, left at the mural
354,000 feet.
Until I’m stepping on to concrete so familiar with
my weight I begin to sink in to it
By the time I reach her foyer I’m chest deep in
gravel, 
she’s already at the door.
She pulls me out by my hair.
She helps me up the stairs.
She asks me what I’m on.
I’d tell her if I could.
I try to calculate the molecules.
She asks why I’m so quiet.
I’m doing math I say.
She scoffs.
She must not believe me.
She asks me to leave.
Which seems kind of trite, I mean I was stuck
between a hard drug problem and an almost
empty beer bottle.
I finish both.
Eureka!
Another beer appears in my hand.