By Marissa Booker
I was a good ole fashioned swinger, named for tossin’ those pretty ladies ‘round the dance floor, toss ‘em I did. their painted faces a blur as they spun ’round a bound, twistin’ years away as they popped out babies and ordered groceries. children stuck close to their breast, breathing them in, shufflin’ to the same old tune, pulses quicken as the youngins shoes scuff up the floor and the ladies grow cold, oh so sensitive to little things like bar breath and others’ juiced-up lipstick left like a limp, a slow advance in the relationship. oh that incline is hard to climb, and I make myself so numb keeping up in these beat up boots. but I keep swinging, I paint my old lady beautiful shades of blue among purple and watch the watercolors fade to papers that make me nothing but the bastard, the barfly, a wick with a quick ignite, the ex, the father that never kissed his kids. I watch, still swinging, as she’s gone and they’re gone and I’m gone, trying to find those early tunes at the bottom of a bottle in a house I never made a home.