Allison and I share a bottle of Spanish wine
in our Tbilisi bed as we take turns blindfolding
each other. This lasts three glasses for me, two
for my wife until the one we work through as her wine
spills from her glass on her bed stand, soaking
a stack of books. All this made possible by
a text-message on our cell-phone from our boarder,
a stand-in for my twenty-five year old self saying
he will not be home tonight, that he’s sleeping over
at a girlfriend’s house, if that’s okay with me.
It’s almost summer, almost time for my return to Bosnia
by myself to see what happens to a country eleven years
after war—I remember getting so used to the sight of bullet holes
and mortar marks on facades and concrete that when I left,
I felt alone. The wine spills. We let it keep spilling.
Everything after ought to carry the stain.