The Bottle Remembers

I do not roar.

I hum in low frequencies,

a velvet murmur between the vineyards

and the marrow of the earth.

They call me gentle,

but it is weight I carry—

cellared histories in cork-sealed silence.

Malbec, they say,

is the dusk bottled.

But I know it is something else:

a cathedral of bruised fruit

and tempered rage,

a whisper aged in oaken regret.

My fingers, broad as riverbanks,

uncork carefully.

The stars blink in, dizzy,

their golden flashes

spinning through the swirls of aroma—

dark plum, black pepper,

old leather sorrow.

Somewhere beneath the swaying vines,

I buried an answer.

It’s still warm,

still fermenting in the loam

where promises used to grow.

I watch the liquid fall into glass

like the soft collapse of belief,

each swirl a storm,

a tiny galaxy

where I used to trace your name.

And you—

you who once sat beside me,

your laughter an instrument of the sky,

you are now

just echo and tannin.

Memory steeped in merlot-toned dusk.

But tonight,

tonight the bottle breathes hope.

Soft optimism curls at the rim,

tinged with something wild.

The future—feral, faintly floral—

is beginning to uncurl from its husk.

The stars haven’t fled.

They dance like drunk fireflies

in the cellar of my skull,

flashes of what might still be.

So I sip, slow and wide-eyed.

Letting the wine whisper

its ancient lullaby—

a lullaby that says

what’s lost is not always gone,

and some flavours deepen

only after they’ve burned.

Let others chase fire.

I’ll keep this twilight drink,

where grief and joy

clink glasses in the dark.

Malbec—

you gentle storm,

you bruised lull,

you bearer of futures not yet broken.