A POEM - EVERY DRINK WAS A LIE

EVERY DRINK WAS A LIE
It was nice because
she didn’t ask us if we wanted another round.
She just brought one over.
If we didn’t want another round
then we’d tell her.
That was how it worked.
The man I drank with,
Peter, was seventy four.
He’d been at the drinking game for six decades.
We didn’t speak much,
just sipped at our drinks.
He was on the vodka
and I was a whiskey man.
I didn’t trust Peter because of that,
because he drank that vodka.
I never trusted vodka drinkers.
But there was another reason
I didn’t trust him, too.
And that was because
in the two years I’d been sitting next to him
on that barstool,
he’d turn to me just before
finishing every single drink and say,
“after this one I’m gonna kill myself.”
But then the barmaid would bring over another
and he’d start in on it,
like he’d said nothing.
It was for that reason
I knew he was a lying bastard.