This is Nina Stottsworth’s first drink.
Seventy years of sobriety swapped for seven seconds of silence.
Cork removed, candle lit, she scoots to the edge of her gray La-Z-Boy and clinks the bottle’s opening along the chipped edge of the wine
glass she found at a yard sale for fifteen cents.
The wine pours out a raisin brown, and Nina frowns at how the
color clashes with the scarlet nail polish she has donned for the occasion.
Her lips glow in a matching color, despite how unflattering bright red lipstick paints itself on a pale seventy-year-old face.
What does Nina hear while she swirls the dark liquid within her wrinkled hands?
The words, “I have trodden the wine-press alone,” and "He
that drinketh this wine drinketh of my blood to his soul,” and "They gave him
to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not.”
No, none of that. None of that.
No, none of that. None of that.
She sips, waiting for the wine’s warmth to sink deep, to finally
quiet the shameful memories buried too deep in her heart to know those good words
anymore.
Instead she gags, cringes, coughs. Strains to stand and
hobble to bed, forgetting the candle melting away on her table.
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*Photo: By Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons / http://pdphoto.org/PictureDetail.php?oldpg=2479.