BA5?

The bottle semmed to tip of its own accord, as if my hand had a life of its own, bypassing my brain, nerves and will, feeding my body the poison.  Flashing through my mind, like the after effects of a coke damaged brain, fragments of my shattered childhood, fragments of my life like a broken mirror, no longer able to be put back together, spiraling out of control.

Churning and yearning down my throat with the tang of childhood pain and loss.  Refusing to go down………Refusing to be swollowed.  The battle between my mind and body almost made me stop…almost….Yet I knew it was expected of me, my right of passage if you will.  A test…a test to myself.  The flickering in my brain continues, like an underground railroad with bad electricity and sparks that threaten to ignite and spread! 

What went wrong?

Why won’t it go away?

  So again….My hand, holding the bottle of my beginning feeds me the elixir of happiness, sadness, anger and violence.  Suddenly I am gone.

Where I went, what I did, I do not know…

With flashes and sparks I arrive to the year 1990 and I was just a little girl of five.  A little girl with a bowl hair cut and huge hazel eyes.  To solemn and wise for my age….The sensation of falling and yet flying at the same time overcame me as I was scooped from the ground, and there he was…The consumer of the elixer itself. 

“Do you see the moths girl?  Do you see the moths?”  He whispers in my ear, his warm rancid breath sweet and sour with the smell of alcohol, and as I frantically search for the moths I know there will be no escape, no right answer.

“No” I whisper so soft he cant possibly hear, yet somehow does.

“Wrong answer” he whispers back….And once again I am falling and life is weighless, meaningless.  Flashes of childhood continue.

Warm sun streaming through the barn door.  The rays of the suns heat hitting the trailer home that we reside in, throwing the spears of light back into my face….My eyes…and I am blind.  Yet still my fingers small and dirty find the sandy peices of copper.  Copper that needs to be sorted and cleaned.  One pile high with the sheen of already clean copper and the other, a tangled mess of dirty rejected pieces of copper.  I relate to this pile. The dirty, messy, abused pile that has been cast aside.  As I stare at this pile the sun warmed pile seems to gain a pulse, a beat, a life of its own. 

Suddenly silence…..Blessed silence, and loving darkness that caresses me and loves me.  Where did I go?  Do I really care?  My mind registered the foul smell of something rotting, reminding me of a coffin.  My coffin.  And then I am dead, weightless, floating and for once not scared of whats next.  As I sink slowly into the mental quicksand that is my soul, I wonder……What about my family?  My brother? My sister?  What will they do with me?  My body that is…The outer shell of my being, my leftovers of a forgotten life.  Will my body remain on this old sofa and decompose next to an empty bottle of vodka?  Will anyone wonder what that rancid smell is and realize that its me?

Suddenly I can’t breath and I have to find a way out.  Pounding on the coffin screaming….And I am awake……..My mouth is cottony and dry, the faint aftertast of vodka remains leaving my head pounding and my heart racing.  The gorge of my youth rises, leaving me gagging, purging my sins into the toilet.  Leaving me empty and heaving.  A shell of wasted matter.  Not important, not worth anything, like the soft feathery wings of a decomposed moth.