Unprompted: Survivor

The dream was a lie. The truth was too much. The middle ground could not hold.

Drinking never seemed to appeal to me, but I found a certain romantic quality to the practice. The smoothness of the dark liquid on the rocks or the pale white water-but-never-so rolling down towards the tongue. Then there's the burn of it; the punishment to pride and the indulgent heat of it. The heart roars and the throat cries. We deny it and embrace it, and we really need to take a piss, but when we take that first breath, that breath is cool. That breath is sweet. That breath is unhindered by the world. By throwing back the glass, we throw back our shoulders. We throw off our burdens.

It tastes like shit. I feel sick inside – allergic to tequila but burning for another shot. It's self-destruction and inner peace. It's death and rebirth and renewal and waste and a red-hot flow through my conduit. Some escape into the drug; I drown inside the romance of the shot. It is not glamorous, though I dream like it is. It is not romantic, really, but I love the way skin feels against me when I'm heated up. People are cool on me then, not burning hot, too scalding to dream to touch.

I know they're not on fire, but the hurt is real, and there is no easy compromise.

The dream was a lie. The truth was too much. The middle ground could not hold.

And yet it must. The end is much too much as well.