Baby's First Brush with Alcoholism

It runs in the blood, you know. The mind may forget, but the body remembers There are things you'll try to shake and fail for years Etched in the nerves for generations to come Love you grandpa You ol' whiskey-soaked lush You've got three daughters and three grandkids who won't touch the stuff So clearly, the responsibility fell to me It's extra bitter today The saving grace my body has Where it realizes that the fun poison it loves Is poison after all You can't even call it liqueur, can you? Sweet enough to drink with a burger Sweet enough to sip like water Sweet enough to lose weeks to Scotch was always your vice, wasn't it? The scent of your breath scarring three girls for life Scaring them away from our stereotypical legacy Christ, you had good taste But it tastes so bitter now Floating on the sweetest cloud for months I've lost the taste for complexity Nearly 30 with the tongue of a teenager It's a pricey habit for a gal too anxious to talk Half-gallon of milk is half a minute of looking for loose change Half-gallon of this would eat an entire shift ten years ago Or at least half of one now Did it bother you as much as it bugs me? The drink didn't kill you, the smokes did But did your stomach ever twitch after a good night And have you questioning the validity of God? You were an excellent Catholic, my boy A serial adulterer and cruel as your mistresses Only to change your ways so close to the end Take solace in knowing everyone but Mom forgave you I wonder how we would have talked nowadays You've been dead for nearly half my life And we so rarely held any meaningful conversations when you lived If I read you this poem, would you fill up my glass? But even pure sugar was too bitter for me tonight My liver's getting sassy with me before I can actually stress test it I made up for every imagined sin of last year But this hasn't been penitence, just excess It's a strange feeling, you know To look in the mirror and see your face in it I think I'll keep my gaze at the ground for a while While I fill this glass with water instead