You had your first beer at fifteen, the year of the warm winter and no cable

When you thought drinking up was an analogue for growing up

Your logic was leant to the rest of your life and the taps kept you tipsy.

When you were thirty you switched from ale to lager as you got larger

While they were putting stitches in your leg from a nasty fall

I was standing over our sofa and stitching together your shattered soul.

At forty we find ourselves fearful

Filled with the dread of the day we all knew would come

It wasn’t the mead you called medicine

But the sticks you claimed to only suck while in the company of the other flies

They said your mind was growing too big for your skull

Was it possible to have felt too much?

I went alone toting travel mugs to your white room

And by your bedside we shared this, your last beer.