When the sake starts to take hold, when I’m staring back at the random kimono lady in the crowd in the pictures on the wall behind the Jack Daniels and Hennessy bottles, that’s when it begins.

That’s when the paper wall begins to tear, when the memories drift together, equally foggy with angles and lines that push against my consciousness like a morning spine against a waking side.

Dream or real? Junmai or daiginjo?

I’m not sure anymore as the room with the table where I made love to you after ten years of almond-eyed resignation feels as real as the college party acoustic flesh jukebox playing “Build Me Up, Buttercup” while the Clash fights the law at the bar. I still feel you, skin to skin and breath to ear, and I still stare down at streets like seams through the bottom of my glass.

Junmai or daiginjo?

I don’t know. I do know how you felt. I do know how you tasted.

And I’ll never forget the loneliness of waking.