I may look 25,
but I'll let you in
on a secret; I'm barely 16.
I’m not sure if numbers
matter, although the law
clarifies that they do, as far as
age at least. Age determines
everything in government,
punishments for a crime,
when and what you can do.
I hate this, 16 to drive, 18 to be an
adult, 21 to drink. Restrictions just
aren’t my thing; I like to take risks. Rules
aren’t my thing; I like to break them.
I guess that’s why they call teenagers
rebellious. But what else can we be, when
we are allowed to do nothing? We have no
privileges, just judgments. So when they’d
asked me why I’d done it, I wish I could’ve
told them…
simply because I could. Strictly because
I knew how. Solely because I wanted to.
Ironically, because it happens . . .

Honestly, honest to God, I swear I never wanted to be a statistic. Ask those who know me, I’m not stupid, I’m not nearly average. Though, I’ll admit I make mistakes. I strive to be free, spread my wings and fly. I thought I was lucky to be so young and act so old, I felt privileged, wanted. It made me feel superior, it made me fly, and it made me feel beautiful. Beautiful when everything I’d ever known about myself was so very ugly.

This potion, what some called a poison, was my charm it was a spell I could cast upon myself. Just one sip, which led to another, and I’d be soaring through the sky of my greatest dreams. I was suddenly in love with my life, with living itself. Everyone was suddenly my best friend, suddenly everyone wanted to talk to me and I had all the right things to say. So I sipped my potion, until all my greatest fears were cast away.

The mirror told me I was wrong, my image was silly even. I remember peering into the metallic glass that night, last night. It was a Saturday, I love Saturdays, well I did… until now. That mirror looked too raw at the edges, like the rust from the misty, smoke filled air was eating away at it not from the outside, from the inner. I imagined looking through the glass to reveal such a hateful brown mush hiding behind its shiny glossed glass. It looked beautiful from the outside, but inside it held a terrible secret.

As I stood in front of this mirror, it revealed my own secret. Not to anyone but myself, however I could see my beautiful deterioration. Beginning at the inner as my potion took my mind. The girl I saw in the mirror didn’t look like me; she was far more attractive than what I used to see. In fact she was substantially more beautiful than the girl I’d done up with makeup earlier this evening. Her dress seemed to inch shorter up her leg and sequins stained her sides. Her beauty was glowing, her smile was irreplaceable… but there’s something this mirror didn’t know about me that I’d always known. That smile is fake. That beauty is skin deep. That glow in her eyes, is strictly anonymous intoxication. Or maybe just a spell cast upon by her beautiful potion.

It’s my Liquid sugar, liquid love, liquid drugs, liquid addiction. How beautiful was this girl on the inside? How beautiful is she now? I’m as good as dead, as I speak. I’m full of my potion, on a bar stool stooped low inside my façade. Pretending to be a girl I’m not used to being, I’m so loud, so very excited, ecstatic, so in love with the very image of myself. Everyone looks at me with jealous eyes; they don’t know how close I am to slipping away. They don’t know what I’ve realized.

Men surround me, though I don’t even know their names. Their words are sloshed and slurred; I can barely hear their voices beneath the potion. I take another sip, the potion spills beyond my rims. I’m full, yet so very empty. I hear them laughing, it echoes in my mind. I’m sixteen but I’ve told them all I’m nearly twenty-five. Some of them have already asked me where I’m sleeping tonight. All I do is laugh, I cannot think. I cannot move. A static smile paints itself on my face; the potion gives my eyes a fresh glaze. I take another sip.

The spell is setting in, I cannot hear my words mix together and tangle with each other like my strands of hair. Sense cannot be made of my sentences, I take another sip. My eyes are open but my vision is closed, I feel the potion draw it’s blackness beyond my sense of light. Potion, beautiful liquid desires have now become my very own demise. My fingers don’t work, but my lips do. I take another sip. I’m killing myself with a spell, a beautiful potion, what a hell of a way to die.

Arms warp themselves around me, I don’t recognize them, and I can barely feel a thing. I’m like jelly squiggling around, jelly knees, jelly feet, jelly joints. I take another sip. I feel a slight prick on my arms, the black peels away for just a second and I see red, crimson, scarlet, blood. Glass covers my arm in tiny shards, I slip away. The potion takes me into wonderland, a world of white. A world of golden nights, my potion happens. Everything happens.

I watch myself on the ground; I stand above my own body. I happen to be dead, yet my mind is still alive . . . I feel everything. Death just . . . happens.

I guess that’s what happens to people like me, people who cannot feel anything until their potion sets them free.