SHOT OF INNOCENCE

 I said, bartender, pour me one shot of whiskey, the kind that burns enough to remind me I’m still here. Then add two shots of pain, because God knows life has been serving those without Ice, kindly add a dash of memory while you’re at it, the sweet kind that turns bitter halfway down cause they say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade but what if the lemons keeps coming from the same tree? What if the sweetness fades when I mix it with Hennessy just to drown the taste of things I can’t undo?

See, I once dreamed of being young and unafraid, of loving without losing pieces of myself in the process but I gave love raw, reckless and real and it drained me till even my silence grew heavy. I used to think love was magnificent the kind that makes poets out of broken men now I just think it is expensive and the currency is always your peace. I remember being seven years old lying on my back under the sky wondering what it felt like to be over twenty, so sure that by then I’d have life figured out but here I am at twenty-six staring at myself wondering if I'd still recognize me, if I am proud of who I'm becoming 

Somewhere between the noise and the nights, between deadlines, heartbreaks and duty I lost that spark that made me me, broken promises shaped me, molded me, scarred me and now being numb feels like a second language. Truth be told i wasn’t always this distant, I wasn’t always this cold but life teaches you to stop expecting warmth from hands that burned you before.

So dear bartender do me one last favor, another shot of whiskey, neat this time, I’ll pay whatever it costs if you can pour back a little of my innocence or the peace I traded just to survive adulthood because beneath all the laughter, beneath the sarcasm and the calm there is still that boy, the one who believed the world was kind and maybe, just maybe tonight, with a glass in hand I’ll toast to him, not because I found him again but because I never stopped missing him.