My older sister Nan and I drink champagne from paper cups.

It’s the same champagne colleagues bought me when I got awards and was a departmental commodity.

Nan drinks to talent, revitalization, serendipity. She says I’ll be on top soon.

I love her smile. I can’t tell her about luck drying, commodities becoming burdens, or drunkenly likening awards to penis size.

I drink to kindness, newness, honor, discarding tempers. 

I swig with desperation.

Like everything, the paper cups go fast. 

I leave the last champagne untouched. Watch the moon illuminate its smooth surface.

I’ll save it for victory. Or desperation.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His stories, “Soon,”  “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and “Tales From A Communion Line,” were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

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