toxic

my

i’m not an alcoholic but i hold my drinks like one.

four fingers grasped tightly onto one side of the bottle, thumb resting on the other side. hand gripped onto the top of the bottle and arm slanted at a 110 degree angle. every drink i hold is my prisoner, and i am its master; and chug, chug, chug: down go the liquids into my throat.

someone asked me once how long it had been since i had consumed a bottle of alcohol. i told them i’d never touched a drop of the deadly toxin in my entire life. shocked and disbelieving, they asked how that could be possible. so i gave them my response.

i told them how i’d seen what poison can do to a person. i told them how i’d seen the way venom quickly and easily contaminates one’s soul. i told them how i’d seen the infection spread and affect those around the one with the disease. and i told them that i’d seen how toxins such as alcohol could absolutely devour one’s light and leave them completely hopeless and broken… what i mean to say is, i told them the story of you.

you were addicted to many things in life, alcohol being one of them. you’d be so absorbed in the high of the feeling of contamination spreading through your bloodstream that you’d be completely oblivious to the corruption the addictions brought to your soul. alcohol was the addiction that turned you to a ghost, i think, because it stripped away your vitality and took away your independence.

but i was the addiction that turned you to ashes, for i was the one that drove you insane and set your whole world into a blazing fire storm; but that’s okay darling. you were my addiction, too, and though you were the only thing i ever obsessed over, you were enough to bring me to ruin, too.

and now it seems that your addictions are my addictions. because though i was never an alcoholic like you, i still hold my drinks like one.