All Stories, General Fiction

Bottled by Yash Seyedbagheri

As an infant, I sought nourishment in bottles, draining milk with frightening speed.

Thirty-four years later, I still need my bottle, except this time they hold Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the weight of credit card debts. They hold things I shouldn’t have bought to feel like a bourgeois dandy, antique bookshelves. Old lamps that glow and create illusions of home and communion. The bottles hold awards I pursued and barely missed, than missed big time, numbers, tempers lost over teaching philosophies and politics. Apologies I can’t speak. A life of could-haves, all laid out before me, scattered puzzle pieces whose counterparts are long missing.

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