Alice's Hangover

After a week of blinding sun, there is always this phase of shadows. Everything I see seems to be darkened by a few tinges. It’s nothing, I tell myself, ‘your eyes are tricking you.’ Sometimes my hands shiver, craving for something to hold – a cigarette, a glass of something quick, maybe another hand. It’s always just a phase, I tell myself, a trick of the mind.

Sadly, I am always true.

There was a moment on one sunny day when she drew her red shawl all the way across her legs. Her feet glistened and her face was bent, in wonder of her own beauty. She didn't want to tell me anything so I stayed and watched. It felt like a moment on another sunny day separated by geography and psyche where I felt that all my fears and all those borders were in my mind. She looked and I walked away.

In my heart I was running, farther away, across oceans, beyond familiar faces, in circles, grueling against my own little miseries. My feet were growing tired as the world turned brown and ugly. My world, a lot smaller.

Then I always see the tiny door and a bottle that says, ‘Drink Me!’.

This is the one game I’m never tired of. I’m forever thirsty now, looking for little bottles in the corners of melancholy. Even drops of salvation will do.