The upside of being a drunk in recovery

I like to imagine all of us sober tonight

Our aching bodies

This mundane human throb

Delicious, honest to God fatigue

After hours at the office

Hours of tidying the house or pruning the rose bushes

Or moving all my books from the bedroom to the living room to make room for a dresser set my Grandfather left me

And being awake enough to wonder why there’s a space between the word living room and not the other

And finding a forgotten purchase of Billy Collins Picnic, Lightning

Reading him in bed until my cat settles next to my head

Soft and groaning like the small of my back

Then rolling over into the darkness to rub the arches of my feet together like the crickets outside my window