Nostalgia Tastes Like Boone’s Farm

Sickly, artificial strawberry
thrums through your bony-
assed body, tiny tingles
as night cools to haze.
What do you think you’re missing?
You split a bottle with another girl
you barely like and won’t
speak to thirty years later, not because
you fall out, but because you don’t.
You can barely make out her red hair
as artificially strawberry as the wine,
yet you remember the long neck
of the cheap glass passed
back and forth, a simple ritual,
uncomplicated as a screwtop.
Let’s face it, even then you knew
Boone’s Farm was not good wine,
and memories, fuzzy at best, pictures
you developed on celluloid. The next day.
groggy, hungover, the drive-thru
offered greasy cheeseburgers
and Diet Coke, a dollar each,
Depeche Mode on the car’s
tape deck, sunglasses shielding
you from the weak sun, and you could
drive, alone, anywhere you wanted,
spinning like an empty bottle.