bitters
Alexandra Benjamin
The other day
I began to wonder
if you were an acquired taste
like black coffee
and red wine
or sometimes both at once
I wonder because
it certainly took a year
of circumstance
and random chance
to circle back
and finally stop feeling like
the word re-try meant waste of time
those countless sips
reversed, rewind
I wonder if I could count
how many tastes it took
before the bitter tinge subsided,
before the receptors in my brain
learned need from like
and decided it was high time
to learn about organic pinot grapes
that live in steel bins
in Oregon
and fair-trade beans
ground gracefully in Guatemala.
It certainly wasn’t on the first swig
or the second
or the third
but it was few enough
to turn glasses into bottles
and savored cafecitos
into guzzled tumbler-fulls,
and one night stands
into standing arrangements,
as it happens.
It certainly was enough,
to make one wonder,
if taking time means compromise
or not quite right—
sophistication,
some call it.
Grown-up taste buds
who know that sometimes
it’s not about the instant bliss
of a brief but beautiful high,
its aftertaste a harsh reminder
of that first most-perfect try.
Insurgent as it is,
it only takes a few thousand hits
to find acquired still fits in;
you’re still addictive—
still as integral as blood,
to be just as deadly too,
a slow release
before the flood.