The liquid poison warmed my skin
it mixed well with the chill hidden 
in the winter Florida breeze, 
it never seems to get cold here, 
but that’s nothing new. 
We teetered on barstools,
sitting so close to each other that
I could feel the warmth of whiskey
radiating through your pores 
and could smell the stale stench
of Tennessee on your breath. 

Our tongues danced vigorously
while struggling to pronounciate 
the names of authors and sonnets, 
trying to impress each other with our
wild and brilliant minds that have been
tricked and taunted by the thought of
more burning liquids to slide down our
throats and dilute the nightmares of reality. 

I could tell that you were falling 
so quickly in love with me then,
oh, I know how to read people.
How you went out of your way just
to brush your skin against mine, 
how you held your hand on my knee
or draped delicately over my shoulder
during our intense conversations. 
Or my favorite, how I caught you 
watching the way my lips moved when
I spoke of Shakespeare and Poe, how you
seemed to get lost in the pillowy perfections
placed so gently on my freckled face. 

I could feel the warmth of whiskey on 
your breath when you spoke close to me,
I admit that I didn’t listen to a word you said,
but instead I imagined random elements of
the future, like how we would place our books
on shelves in our summer cottage, and how we
would fall asleep after sipping bourbon and 
laughing at how we met in the bar. 

Oh, it must be the whiskey speaking, but