If She Didn't Live in a Bottle

“You know this is how to find her…” 

The voice in the back of my head giggles in an already drunk sounding voice. 

She alway appears in the back of my mind when I’m at the lowest of lows pacing the aisles of an overshelved suddenly crowded liquor store. 

How it feels overcrowded with just me and the cashier watching me boredly, not knowing that I’m losing myself because she won’t shut up. 

“There has to be somewhere else to look for her,” I mumble to myself trying to silence the voice even though I’ve already got a bottle of the poison in my hands. 

“Yeah, but you already know she’s in there…” the giggling returns, 

And I know, 

I know that this is the fastest way to find who I’m longing for. 

I have to grip the bottle tighter so that it doesn’t fall through my shaking hands,

The cashier doesn’t notice the shakes as he glances at the card I’m holding up to him and takes the bills from me before ushering me out the glass door covered in smudges and fingerprints. 

Sitting in my car I look into the bottle, 

Someone less aware would assume I was actually looking for something. 

As soon as the warm liquid passes my lips I know that I have found her. 

The girl who smiles and jokes and makes wishes, 

She has no idea what’s waiting tomorrow.

She gets to go away and I’m stuck with the consequences of her words, 

Of her actions and promises that she doesn’t… 

That I don’t recall because as soon as the bitter, brown, room temperature liquid passes my lips my body is hers. 

So she flirts, 

She dances, 

She leaves wreckage and lipstick marks places she shouldn’t even consider being. 

She is a mess…

But she is carefree, happy even. 

She can breathe without considering whether it could be the last before she finally breaks and ends up lost and trapped within the white walls. 

I wish I could have the beautiful happy girl with me always, 

That I could be her without having to drown and suffocate myself with honey colored poison that is supposed to make the feeling go away. 

I suppose in a way it does go away, 

The pain…

But it always comes back with a tighter grip around my heart and the anxiety with a stronger cage to keep my brain from thinking outside of the intrusive thoughts I had the chance to forget. 

I know that she’s gone and done with her fun when I finally wake up on the bathroom floor, 

Or on the couch, 

On lucky days it’s in my own bed. 

A pounding in my head that can only be explained as the feeling one would face if their head was being bounced as a basketball stuck on a marry go round. 

If I’m feeling brave, as soon as I washed the past night’s mistakes from my skin,

I’ll pick up the phone to assess the damage I know she’s already done, 

Sending messages she shouldn’t have sent to people she shouldn’t be thinking of at all. 

I hate her and I miss her and wish she would leave forever, 

Stick around until the end of time. 

I wish she was easier to find somewhere that wasn’t picked from the shelves of an empty overcrowded liquor store.