by Nina Medeiros

Created on: April 03, 2009

The truth?

No one drank but me.

The apartment on Clark Rd.

was a l c o h o l free.

Of course,

there were pills

and a single festive bottle of Khaluah

mixed each year, into celebratory

white Russians

on Christmas eve.

No one drank in this eight year old's world.

Except Grandpa Carl Smith

who died before I was born,

and Uncle Dale

who had been permanently institutionalized in my early childhood.

It was just me

and a pain that sat like paste, and dried

my insides flaking away over time.

Glued to each other,

the three of us on Clark Rd.

No hereditary excuses could be made,

even Auntie Jean, my mother's oldest sister

was not permitted to blame her weak moral fiber on geneaology.

Not even from the grave

where grandma used to visit sometimes on Sundays

with flowers.

Jean tried to explain it,

the truth

to us.

But they were women who put half-full bottles of liquor

back

back

back

into the dark recesses of a kitchen cabinet

and waited stoically, until

next year

for relief.

And then in January of 1984,

I found it.

For the first time,

I met the liquor

without the cream.

A long deep introduction that singed the core of me

and settled, deeply

where it had always belonged.

The truth?

I was hung,

adding water to liquor

until nothing remained but a thin disguise

passing time in the cabinet, until the next

Christmas Eve

waiting for Santa.

They stared at me from the kitchen.

"It's the deception" my mother said,

and grew quiet

with a silence that demanded some explanation

(and not the hereditary one!)

The Truth.

There are no explanations,

will never be one

just surrender to the fact that I will always chose the drink.

In the face of all that alcohol robs, blinds and abrades
I will still

need.

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