her days off were spent drinkin’…she’d drive to the liquor store come Saturday morn religiously…looked for the best deals…Fireball…Paddy’s whiskey…bottles of cheap vodka…red wines…whatever was on sale… woman was onna mission…

many times she couldn’t wait till she got home to start…placed spirits in plastic sippy cups…the kind she used to give her daughter on long trips to Florida…pictures of Mickey on it…fill it to the top…package of mints in the glove box…

and she drank into the night…sittin’ alone in the dark watchin’ tv shows…marathons of, Law And Order…CSI…with the sound turned down…just pictures of other lives…people solvin’ crimes…unreal reality of murder and mayhem in big cities…clues would pile up…

in her mind she wished she was on that screen…wanted to be a movie star when she was younger…leave her small town and head out West to Hollywood…had dreams of makin’ it big…had to settle for sellin’ insurance and a husband she thought she loved…kids…two cars…a home out on Bluffton Road…some cat named Spike…

thought she was happy for a long time…twenty years of marriage…church on Sundays…Christmas mornings opening packages…Bailey’s and coffee…a cigarette at the kitchen table with her yogurt and granola…a kiss on the lips…,I’ll be late tonight…,he was always late…

years passed by…leading her to a person she didn’t recognize anymore when she caught glimpses of herself in store windows…mirrors…lines had replaced blushed cheeks…her body had more curves…blonde hair turned gray…she didn’t like what she saw…

so…she drank…forgetting her own life for hours on end till she’d pass out ’round midnight inna big old Lazy-boy with a blanket on her and a glass knocked over on the floor…no dreams…just a racing mind that wanted nothing more than to be turned off…erased of all that was inside of it…this was her mission…

and she always fulfilled it…