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I sat down in a lonely dark corner
Facing away from the bar
And was served my wine...
Deep red...
Half glass...
And very bitter.
Maybe it was my tears
Falling...
Falling...
Mixing in with...
Becoming part of...
That glass of wine...
But it was bitter.
I was looking back.
I saw how my life might have been...
To have a chance for real things...
Real love...
And a wonderful life
With a beautiful man...
If only...
If only...
If only...
I swirled the wine
Mixing in the tears
Which didn't ebb the bitter taste.
I had suffered so much.
It wasn't a story
Where I'd had a fairly passable existence
Simply living with an unfulfilled yearning...
Just... an incomplete sense of living...
Just... normal coping and compromise...
This was a story of suffering...
Of desperately needing...
Of crawling towards some unseen oasis
In a never-ending desert
Full of dangers... and poisonous reptiles.
I had looked for help
Raising my heavy head to see into the distance...
Seeing only the mirage...
And the heat...
And the blowing dust.
I swirled my glass again.
I hadn't seen my help...
Hadn't seen it...
And I had suffered.
The wine was so bitter
It made my jaws sag
And my teeth grit...
Bitterness on bitterness.
What might have been...
Bit right through my heart.
I pushed the glass away.
I listened to the music...
Pushing everything away from me...
Just pushing it far away.
I looked up at the pictures
Placed haphazardly up the wall...
Someone's collection
Of beautiful things...
No theme to them...
Just pictures of beauty
And character
And goodness...
Sweetness...
Hope...
Love...
Truth...
Forgiveness...
Gentleness...
And I no longer felt so alone...
Someone else in this world
Was looking, too...
For those things...
And had left them for all to see...
To... make the wine seem less bitter...
To... keep the light shining in the dark...
To... offer that cup of water
For us desert travelers.
I pulled my wine to me...
And sipped...
It wasn't bitter like I thought...
It was just very good brandy.
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