Drunk In Love

My husband has been making me gin fizzes with cucumber. After ten years without drinking gin I have discovered a new love. It mixes well with red lipstick and pearls. I can sip it and pretend my short hair is on purpose. Pretend my life is, too.

The girls are lazy in the living room. I could take them to their summer daycamp but I've decided to let them be lazy. Indy flew in from outdoors, interrupted my yoga routine with her knees as red as flapper lips, bleeding bright jewels down her shins. She is entering her coltish phase. She is all hair and limbs, fold of thighs, twist of neck. They are wild in the evenings when all we want is to drink gin fizz, which makes us remember what it was to fall in love.

The mornings are misty. I can pretend I'm in Ireland until they give way to sun.

At night the house is quiet. The gin-soaked cucumbers lie in the sink. I follow my rhythms, pushing my night longer and longer by dizzy degree. Paperbacks spread-eagled on the couch. Pulsing to the jazz of hidden skin. The cat gallops around the house, stampede on the old wood floors. The yellow light is lulling. I turn it off and outside there are fireflies. They sparkle in the dark. They are the bubbles in the champagne glass of moonlight and magnolia air. I am inside myself and the world leaves me alone. Dazzled, desiring. Drunk.