Kingdom of Amber
The glass is not a door to peace,
It only teaches noise to cease;
It dims the clocks inside my chest,
Yet leaves the deeper wounds unrest.
The whiskey does not kill the ache,
It teaches pain a softer shape;
The grief remains beneath the skin,
But speaks in whispers, not a din.
A burning river, amber bright,
Flows through the caverns of the night;
The world grows distant, slow, and wide,
Like stars dissolved in a darker tide.
I do not drink to learn to fly,
The bottle never lifts the sky;
It bends the map, distorts the land,
And puts new shadows in my hand.
For every ghost I try to drown,
Returns adorned with golden crowns;
The liquor grants them velvet tongues,
And lets them sing through aging lungs.
The room becomes a drifting sea,
Where memory unbuttons me;
Old loves emerge from salted deep,
The wounds I buried lose their sleep.
And in that haze I sometimes find
The hidden gears behind the mind;
How every joy and every scar
Were always nearer than they are.
But morning comes with honest eyes,
And strips the gilding from the lies;
The bottle never held the key,
It only lent the dark to me.
So here's the truth the glasses hide:
No ocean waits on the other side;
The drink's a mirror, cracked and thin,
Reflecting what was locked within.
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