I am wary. Treachery waits for me in the cracks and corners of my house, in the bottoms of all my bottles. It whips in the wind, slamming doors, whispering rumors to sad susceptible friends. Gin is not the only poison I am swimming in. Smoke can't rise in it. It just clouds my judgement. I need to stay sharp, needles and pins. I need to cut through this as quick as I can. So much of getting through is holding my breath and waiting, letting go and sinking, hoping sometime soon, my feet will touch the bottom.
This bottle is bluer than the November sky. And just as cold. The liquid inside is just as bitter. Memories, sky blue and gin soaked, cling to all my fingers just like the smell of juniper. Sharp, sticky, still green smelling after so much time. It smelled like juniper the day he died. It grew outside the school. I smelled it as I was walking in, when they made the announcement over the PA. I was late, and the sky was this blue, brilliant and shot through with late autumn light, early morning light, that day I was late for school. In my midnight blue dress, and my best smile on, taking a moment to straighten the hem, looking up into the high-piled clouds with the light sifting down across the juniper bushes, warming them up, releasing that scent over the duller, dustier scent of the dew evaporating off the concrete. Thinking, "I look pretty," and not really listening to the morning announcements, not really caring that I was late except to hope some boy would notice my legs in the short blue dress I never wore and the tall black boots. A bit of mint still on my teeth pleasantly, the same rich sunshine in my sister's hair as she turned around ahead of me, her face wet and strangely crumbly. Her voice thick and pinched and wet we she said that he was dead. The juniper and the blue and the bend of light and the bend of knees turning to liquid and suddenly standing on the dewy concrete drowning. Drinking in the mornings, drowning. "Love is like a bottle of gin, but a bottle of gin is not like love."
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