I am a poet. I am a photographer. I am not a drinker.

I love my coffee in the morning, my tea in the afternoon, but alcohol is not part of my plan, it is a rare treat.

I am a husband, I am a father, I keep my body fit and my mind sharp, I do not waste my time in a haze, I do not lose the early mornings to pain.

I am intelligent, I make good, long-term decisions, I am funny, and I form strong relationships, I do not have drinking buddies, I do not go out on the piss, I treat my drinks with ceremony, and respect.

I am alive, I am interested in experiencing the world, I do not numb myself from it, I do not romanticize the image of drinking whiskey, I recognize that cocktails are fun, I partake only on occasion, but enjoy making them for others, too.

—

Update: it took till March 2024 to actually commit to this vision of myself.

Maybe it was the cold morning, bundled up on our walk for coffee, hustling back so I could head to the hospital, car seat inspections, practicing the motions of buckling in, maybe it was that imagining, or the nostalgia of brewing a cup of tea to stave off the parking lot chill, there’s just something different in my vision, in that part of me that’s self aware and aware of everything around me, it feels like a center is forming, an inward force that pulls it all together, a dazzling core that opens my eyes, it is love, I think, an evolution thereof, in a way I have never quite felt before.

Deep, impending moments press their weight into the fabric of our being a gravity that pulls us to the inevitable core and we claw claw claw at anything that’ll keep us unswallowed

Wouldn’t it be easier if all the sins were buried too; turned to ashes like the flesh that brought to life the quiet crude which should have stayed a fantasy, and even then examined hard; for all the living in that moment, the life of love that you discard.

Wouldn’t it be easier if all my family showed me ‘how’ instead of all how not to be, as if I could simply not allow the drink, the smoke, the wondering eye to rise in me like the meeting of storms, not lessons learned or lines in sand, my soul holds on to prior forms.

Wouldn’t it be easier to treat you as an effigy and not a victim of an ancient thread that binds us not with empathy but mutual disappointment for what we could not overcome; an unattended funeral awaits for those who falter and succumb.

Now you can’t see the mountain, the smoke that silks the hazy green, the layers on layers of silhouette peaks, the sheer descent that seeks the deep, the heat, the breeze, the forever-view that better men have led me to.