Saturday, August 18, 2012, I met you for the first time. I was so excited to meet you because everyone I surrounded myself with loved you and in the past always questioned if I knew who you were. I never did. Until now.

When I laid eyes on you, excitement rushed over me with what I would assume much of the same curiosity that washed over Adam when he first laid eyes on Eve. But you’re no Adam and I’m no Eve. And even though you resemble the apple and the serpent we aren’t in Eden.

I should’ve known better, but the peer pressure of knowing you was stronger than the truth I thought I knew so well. That night I met you.

We instantly clicked. Clicked like how it sounded when you put one handcuff on me and the other on you. We became best friends. But I was too young to see you any other times but on the weekends, when I could ask someone older to sneak me some of you.

Dangerous. Probably why I liked you so much. And then I was old enough.

October 8, 2014. 21. I was free at last from the burden of asking. Now my asking consisted of can I get sugar around the rim or can I get another round?

My love for you was growing. I saw you often. Often enough our nights ended with you laughing and me on my knees over a lifted up toilet seat. Often enough that I fell asleep with my head spinning like it was on an axis and waking up with gaping holes in my memory that matched the gaping holes in my heart that I thought your liquid was strong enough to fill.

But that’s all you ever were, liquid. Not blood. But now I’m blood purchased* and the Bible is my receipt. Even though it was over two thousand years ago, I feel like I was there.

Laying on the ground at the foot of the cross Jesus was stretched across with my eyes, nose, ears, legs, arms, heart and soul cracked wide open enough to catch the blood that came streaming, pouring, leaking down from every gash, tear and rip on His body.

July 27, 2015, I had enough of you. I reached my breaking point. I refused to hang out with you or any of your split personalities, after one more time.

This last time, I called you up and told you to come over. When you got to my house I lined you up. You thought I was lining you and your multiple personalities up so I can get a better view of which version of you I wanted to indulge in first. I lined you and your alter egos up on the ledge of my window seal. I set margarita up next to tequila, set tequilla up next to patron, I set patron up next to limeritta, rasberitta and strawberitta, I set them up next to mojito, I set mojito up next to long island, I set long island up to martini and I set martini up to the personality I knew best, bacardi straight no chaser. With tears streaming down my face, I set you all up. why are you crying you asked? Let me fix it you said.

But there was so much blood in my ears I couldn’t hear.

After you were all lined up I took out my weapon of mass destruction which is actually my pink painted AK-47 which is actually my pink cover bounded Bible. I peered through the scope of my AK making sure my aim was as sharp as the words that will soon split the sky upon Jesus’ return.

No second guessing, I pulled the trigger on each and every one of your personalities I had once loved so deeply. Bang, bang, bang, bang, RELOAD bang, bang, bang, bang.

Glass shattered everywhere. When I got to my favorite version of you, Bacardi, you stood there with your hands up, like a demon you yelled please have mercy on me. But just like an atheist on judgment day, I had no mercy left for you. I was shooting to kill. I pulled the trigger. Bang. I shot you dead.

Then following the tradition of all deaths I had a funeral for you. When the pastor, who was actually me because I was the only one at the funeral, asked if anyone had any final words, I got up in all black, smoothed out my black nightgown, straightened out my black bonnet clicked clacked over to the mic with my black velvet house shoes, held the mic with my black finger painted nails cleared my throat and read Proverbs 20:1

“Those led astray by drink cannot be wise.”

That day I chose wisdom. That day I buried you so deep with His words, nothing could resuscitate you and nothing could dig you up.

After the funeral, in dying memory of you, I set up truth next to love, love next to joy, joy next to peace, peace next to patience, kindness next to goodness, faithfulness next to gentleness, and gentleness next to self-control. I put them all in a bulletproof case to ensure the next time my pink bounded Bible would need to shoot to kill, their skin would never be pierced.

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*The blood that Jesus shed on the cross, was the price attached to sin. Now, all we have to do is believe in what Jesus did on the cross and we will have eternal life. It’s an uneven exchange called grace.

Poetry