The Millbury Street Shuffle
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| Millbury Street is directly behind the woman, the Hotel Vernon was the end of the shuffle |
THE MILLBURY STREET SHUFFLE
We begin at the top of Millbury Street
with the optimism of newborn Vikings—
legs steady, voices bright,
convinced we are legends in the making.
Twenty-one years alive,
twenty-one drinks ahead,
a math problem no sober person
has ever solved gracefully.
The first bar greets us
like a forgiving aunt—
soft lights, easy pours,
a bartender who calls you “kid”
with the kind of affection
that makes you feel both young
and temporarily invincible.
By bar four, colors start to bloom—
neon halos around street signs,
a warm glow under your ribs
like you swallowed a lantern
because someone dared you.
By bar eight, the shuffle begins:
that sideways drift
your feet invent without permission,
a kind of drunken interpretive dance
meant to convince gravity
you’re still on speaking terms.
By bar ten, you’re arguing
with a traffic cone about the nature of destiny.
The cone is winning.
By bar thirteen,
you have made at least two new friends,
someone’s dog is wearing your birthday hat,
and you are loudly insisting
that water is a “myth invented by Big Hydration.”
By bar sixteen,
Millbury Street wobbles a little—
not dangerously,
just enough to remind you
that pavement is a suggestion and not a promise.
By bar eighteen,
your friends are holding
a loose-formation phalanx around you,
guiding you like a ceremonial float
in the parade of your own terrible decisions.
By bar twenty,
you raise your glass with the gravitas of a knight
about to swear an oath
you do not understand
but deeply believe in.
And at bar twenty-one—
the finish line, the altar,
the victory lap disguised as a stool—
you take your final drink
with the joy of someone
who survived their own ambition.
At the end of Millbury Street,
you are a masterpiece of chaos:
laughing, leaning, luminous,
a triumphant mess wrapped
in birthday-colored bravado.
This is the Millbury Street Shuffle—
a pilgrimage of youth,
a marathon of questionable wisdom,
a celebration so spectacular
you’ll only remember half of it,
and cherish all of it.
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