you’re just like your uncle, my grandma once said to me
over chicken wings while discussing my alcohol use. i think
she meant it as encouragement. like charisma is hereditary,

like appetite is charming when it belongs to a man–
and it sat on my ribs as i buttoned my black dress
months later, fabric pulling tight across a body i suddenly couldn’t trust.
morning, said my father, but he breathed it like a sigh, and
i was– mourning– as i stood in his kitchen, surveying
the sunrise. standing next to a box of narcan
arrived one week too late, i began to think that i am
just like my uncle. unable to control my inhibitions.
mistaking excess for evidence that i am still alive– so,
i stained my uncle’s funeral with my favorite lipstick– pressed it
to paper cups, to trembling cheeks, to the rim of a flask
passed discreetly between cousins under bathroom stalls in a
desperate attempt to avoid distant relatives murmuring you’re so strong
in the same tone they once used to say you’re so pretty. i think
about how we both liked the room cold, the music loud, the glasses
refilled before they were empty. how restraint felt
like a language we never quite learned. i don’t know
if that makes me just like him, i only know that
when my grandma hugged me goodbye, she held my face in both hands
and searched it for something she recognized.