Once upon a Friday night,
she waltzed down those rickety steps 
she helped her dad build out of plywood
and two-by-fours nailed together 
next to the porch, grinned as she sashayed
before her parents and the hound dog; 
the latter didn’t pay any mind.

Mind you, it wasn’t a balmy Friday; 
frigid wind swept through her cold-shoulder top,
up the flouncy skirt that had been so cute indoors.
She shivered from her perfume-spritzed curls
to her merlot-polished exposed toes
all the way from those first few wooden steps
to the neon doorway of a downtown club.

Probably once upon a Friday night it had a name,
but most of the names and faces that evening
would spin into a hazy tequila Saturday sunrise
before she even realized her Uber never came,
unlike that boy buying all the Patron shots
whose name and face she can’t seem to forget,
even more than a decade later, as hard as she tries,
as many salty tequila tears that she has cried.