Skewered

Skewered

I had embarrassed myself
pretty badly.
The stress of secrets and existential crises
made it easy to guzzle
all those creamy White Russians;
which by the way
is comfort food
for drunks.
Sadly,
it had been happening a lot more around that time
so I was becoming more skilled in the lost art of the apology
and recovering some of my repute.

On this particular occasion I used food.
I went out and bought everything:
Some lean beef that was on sale,
red onions, tomatoes,
both green and red peppers.
I made amends among friends
while I made marinade
and while I cut steak into chunks
and the peppers and onions
into pieces are big enough
so that they wouldn’t slip
through the
grill grates.

Rather than angry,
they were mostly worried about me:
True to the nature of too good of friends.
It made me feel even worse
that I was consequence free.

I have always
felt that the heat
and the fire
make us less raw and more full of flavor and tastes
like they make the onions and
peppers sweeter and give the
beef a good char.
And being skewered through
like browning, juicing kabobs
helps us keep it together
as we endure hot orange coals.