my "tequila poem"

I am seventeen again, learning to take shots of tequila. Salt. Shot. Lemon. To take the bite out of the liquor, I eat the slice of lemon whole, spitting out lemon seeds like drunken kisses because these things (the lemon seeds, the kisses) are things I shouldn’t need. But I do need them. I need them the way I need his body on top of mine, not in the moment of weight, of too much weight for such a small girl (the needing is gone then), but before, probably late at night, when I’m alone thinking it might be a nice sort of weight, a covering pressure that I could cower inside of like a hooded sweatshirt. There’s a shot where I know I’ve had too much, where I can feel myself getting sparkly and I have to keep swallowing, sucking at the lemon acid still on my tongue until my body gives in to a Too-Much that feels like Not-Enough at the time. Not enough even dancing with my palms pressed against the ceiling and my bare feet slipping in spilled liquor on the countertop. Not enough until I’m drinking coffee on an empty stomach and just so nervous all the next day that my wrists are even shaking and then it’s back to Too-Much. Maybe this too-much body weight, this biting his lips (warm with the smell of cigarette smoke), this pulp from a very yellow rind, maybe this forth or fifth shot of tequila, could all happen at once, and the Too-Much and the Not-Enough would get tired of each other and for just a second I’d be at Okay. Not even at Great or Well or Happy but just at Okay. Alright. Still wrists. Peace.