Sobriety: Day 163

I can’t help that the recipe calls for wine.
It’s a favorite of mine, and cooking
is one of my substitutes, a spotlight I sweep
the horizon with to keep the shadow
from jumping the fence and carrying off
the wobbling calf I’m nursing to strength.

Cooking for others buys me tolerance.
They’ll have to hear how the med I took
to decrease my anxiety increased my anxiety,
about intrusive thoughts on my commute saying,
“Just keep driving into the night, cross state lines,
get a motel room, await instructions,” or worse.

But my chicken piccata will balance that out.
I tried to get Marta to buy the wine, but
driving ten minutes each way for one item
was out of the question—she’s European, you see—
so I buy a dry white. It feels huge in my hand
at the checkout. I tell the cashier it’s for cooking.

Like he cares, like I hadn’t been in that store
each week with a cart provisioned for months.
The employees know who the addicts are.
I unpack in the kitchen and the bottle has grown.
It takes up a whole counter.
I slice and pound and chop and dredge squeezed

in a corner. I turn my back to brown the chicken,
but its presence is loud. Is this what psychics feel
when they channel your loved one? Convulsing
and straining while all you hear is the air conditioner
and the faint sound of traffic? Time to deglaze,
so I reach for the bottle, impossibly big,

but my hand grows to match. I feel the smooth glass,
the ridge of the label, the grain of the paper,
the shifting weight of liquid, the reverberant “gluck”
of air bubbles as I pour it. All of my body
moves into my hand, every nerve ending.
I think I can feel individual atoms.

The smell of alcohol burning off is sickly sweet.
I have to set it aside to tend to the sauce
but suddenly I’m Bilbo reluctant to relinquish
the Ring to Frodo. I somehow manage to
take the bottle, now filling the kitchen, and wrangle it
into the fridge like so many clowns cramming

into a tiny car. Most of the wine is left. Wine
I paid for. It would pair nicely with chicken,
or with nothing at all, alone in the basement.
I chastise myself and finish the meal. I’ll serve this
to friends. I’ll be with people. I’ll look in their faces
and think, “Am I doing it? Is this connection?”