It Will Always Come To This

It will always come to this.

Empty moments and even emptier words sunk into liquids of varying viscosities, varying colours, varying amounts, all with varying abilities to obliterate, enhance, or make someone else smile.

The eyes are all the same. Each sits in the same spot, arms folded on the cragged wooden picnic table stained with ash and the regrets of previous visits. No one has really moved since last week, last month. Last year for the old boy at the far end. Some say he was born here. Cigarette pinched between yellow fingers, skin wrinkled into stories that no one wants to hear anymore. He paints the brightest picture, because he already knows. He already knows how it ends.

I’m still pretending. My own choice of amber poison doesn’t really reflect any crux of any matter within me. It doesn’t really define my choices or point out that I am incapable of understanding which choice I have to make. The fact that my breath will be sticky and sour is not my only tangible means of identification; it is not the only way, that I remember that I exist.

I wake up in the morning, yellowed, expelled, and reaching for the bottle.

It will always come to this.