Empty stalls either side of me,

I’m drinking alone

Bottles in front of me,

Drinking it down

So the pain goes

There’s the shadow of a bottle,

It’s touching me

I look at it momentarily,

Observing how with every strobe light,

It moves to the beat

The barmaid asks me,

If I’m waiting for someone

I said I was waiting for these thoughts to stop bothering me,

She sat opposite,

Held my hands and said

“They’ll stop bothering you when you distract yourself from them; until then, they have power over you.”