Ceremony

As he stumbles on the bus he proclaims to the driver, “I drank her under the table!”

How does one “drink” an other; consume this other? What role, the table, under which his Passions play?

I do not wish to forsake this one or this other, though I swear I do not know them. I only know he stands, arms outstretched, holding bus stanchions across the aisle in cruciform stance.

I tell myself it is so he will not fall. What if it is so he will not rise?