The Mainstay

I’m sunk deep in this old armchair, the one with the springs poking through like bad memories, and the room’s half-lit, half-dead, snow still spitting at the window. the clock’s oak pendulum swings back and forth, steady as a slow heartbeat, counting me out. I’m just letting go, sliding down easy into the booze and the years.

“Think of your soul like an onion,” my psychologist says, and I don’t stop him. I reach for the glass and let him keep peeling, every tick, every goddamn tock, another skin of me curling off and gone — a little less of me for a little more of this. same trade as always.

and there she is again, in my mind, my gran, a long way back now, elbows deep in flour and cinnamon, sliding that apple pie into the oven like it could save somebody. while it browned, she’d be at the table with a funnel, pouring the mainstay into old mainstay bottles, cutting it with water so my uncle wouldn’t drown so fast. his liver already yellow as old newspaper, him floating in and out of some charity ward while the machines beeped like this same clock. she never said much, just worked quiet, hands sure, pretending a little dilution might keep death from knocking too loud.

tick. tock.

another breath in, another breath out.

I never signed anything. I was just born into it — the same account she was settling at that kitchen table with her funnel, the same one my uncle drank down to the dregs. terms handed over like a recipe, mother to son to whoever’s left.

and here I am, years later, still peeling, still crying, still listening to that bastard pendulum tell the whole tired story one slow beat at a time, still saying yes, pour it, I’ll settle later. you always think you’ll settle later.

my poor uncle’s gone,
cheap gin tastes like his last cough,
I still drink alone