It’s getting hard to make out the numbers by my bed, the clock. In the middle of the night they are a soft blue fuzz, military time, harkening back to Europe. On New Year’s we drove down from Chester to Stratford-upon-Avon for two weeks, my first dry January. That dinner we had on the first of the year, 2016, right before Bowie died. Some Italian restaurant with a drink special involving Prosecco that sounded harmless, like not even qualifying as alcohol per se, how maybe we could scale back the whole dry thing to include just one drink, perhaps just on this day (being a holiday) and how Dawn said uh no, it means no alcohol, none, that’s why they call it “dry.”

My trunk twisted like a tree in bed, just me and the night guard. TV from the room down below, half a phone dialogue in the other. Nine years later on New Year’s here I am sober for good. Black-eyed peas for dinner, the last of the ham and cookies. Swapping out the bulbs on the bistro lights from multicolor to clear. Putting up the new calendar, nothing written on the squares. That feeling when the body jerks in sleep as if another body just collapsed into it. Where did you go then? And why did you come rushing back?

Categories: Addiction, Creative Nonfiction

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, travel