Bottles

 

I’m eight years old when my grandpa hands me a coke bottle,

The foreign glass texture and the vintage label excited me,

Popping the cap off and seeing it fall on the counter made me giggle.

He tells me, “Everything tastes better out of a bottle.”

 

There was something special about glass bottles that he loved so much,

Maybe it was the intricate designs or the label that call to days long gone,

Or that he didn’t like the metallic aftertaste of aluminum cans,

Grandpa was funny like that.

 

My grandpa and I are a lot alike,

We both like wearing out cowboy boots,

Our favorite superhero is Captain America,

And we both like drinking soda out of the bottle.

 

But we’re also very different,

You see, my grandpa is a great storyteller,

He can make up jokes on the spot and get the whole room laughing,

Everybody loves my grandpa.

 

Me, on the other hand,

I repeat the same damn story all the time,

My jokes only make people cringe,

And at least my grandpa loves me.

 

But my hands can write beautiful poetry,

And I really love listening to stories,

While telling jokes isn’t my forte,

I know how to react to them!

 

Also I can repress my emotions!

I used to just keep them mixed in together,

A chaotic mixture of regrets, anxiousness, and panic,

All steaming together in a sealed cauldron.

 

I know it’s not healthy,

And I’m not doing it for attention

It hurts more than anything,

Taking forever and a day to heal.

 

I don’t like the taste of when it blows up,

The debris makes me feel sick,

The metallic aftertaste coating my tongue,

Filling my stomach with dread.

 

So I bottle them up,

Seal a cap on the and put them away to deal with later,

But later never comes.

The shelf filling precariously with fragile and intricate glass.

 

Because as my grandpa told me,

“Everything tastes better out of a bottle.”