No one tells you how it tastes, do they? No one tells you how bitter regret grabs your tongue at the back of your throat when you walk the streets at 3 in the morning. No one explains why it is the loneliest you’ll ever feel as you walk away from another person you would never love, but you had tried for a few hours. No one tells you why you'll do it again tomorrow. No one tells you how startling the paradox is: that everyone who walks the streets at this time of day isn’t there because they particularly want to be, and that although you populate the kerbs with like-minded spirits, it only seems to make everyone even more pathetic. Everyone looks at each other and thinks one thing: ‘I don’t want to end up like that.’ It’s a street full of tragedy. You realise you are reduced to someone a younger-you would have defined as exactly that. You’re shivering although it’s not colder out there than inside yourself. You’re only thinking of taking a shower and of taking these goddamn heels off that are killing your feet; but you’ll have to wait until you get home because there’s probably glass on the sidewalk. Traffic lights change for no one in particular, and in the strange changing coloured lights you can see someone walking in the shop windows. You look at her and she looks at you, and you imagine you must come out from behind her, because the person staring back surely isn’t you. Your eyes never looked that sad, your brow never frowned that way, your lips were never swollen like hers. No, she must be a brief companion through the night, a fellow traveler walking beside you and blocking your image. She couldn’t possibly be you. You promptly decide against using mascara from now on, because the way it has painted the colour of this girl’s soul onto her cheeks so visibly, like it branded her, is too violent to watch. Because yours isn’t as black yet, is it? You put your hands against the cold glass and she does too and it grabs you in the middle of your spine and squeezes. You study your new face and when you start feeling sick with the realisation it was you all along, you blame the alcohol and leave. You leave to find new arms or a bed that will warm you up to yourself again, hands of a human or the kiss of the bottle. You walk home past other addicts and thieves, and snicker at how well you fit their description and figure this too should be a felony. That would make the bad neon lighting and the cigarette buds that coughed out their last burning breath less intriguing, maybe. Or no, perhaps, it would even make it sweeter: because it makes you feel dangerous when you decide to commit the crime. It quenches the thirst for rebellion. Breaking the law would be almost as satisfying, I think, as breaking hearts.
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