A little girl knocked on my door today, flower bouquet in her hands and a smile plastered on her face as though its the only emotion she knows. She steps foot in without asking permission to. Her hair falls down the side of her face and I was trying hard to hide the tears that were streaming down mine. She didn't hide her curiosity
“Why are you sad?”

When her eyes looked up and met mine I felt ashamed that I could be uncovered by a girl who I seemed to recognize but couldn't quite pin out the memory of where. She hands me the flowers and their scent brings me back to a time that seems so clear, yet so distant.
I tell her I’m not sad, but rather sick. And the smile drops from her face as she says “Mommy says that too”

It woke a spark in the hollow of my mind to a time where I used to hear the same thing. Flashed back to a time where the only music I heard was the crashing of pans in the kitchen and the fall of hard liquor into small cups that were guzzled before I could taste them. The sound of yelling in the bathroom and glass being broken at 1am when the world was asleep. The whimpering of a small voice coming from the dusty couch in the family room, where our family never gathered in. The stumbling of my fathers intoxicated feet as he came up the stairs to pass out in a bed that was made for two. I remembered her skin stained purple, her eyes shot red and asking her “Mommy, why are you sad”. And with delicate hands that enfolded my face, she barely looked me in the eyes as she said “Darling, I’m not sad; but rather sick”

In that moment I realized that sometimes, they’re the same thing.
My throat dried up and hands felt numb as I grabbed the girl by the shoulders
“What’s your name and where are you from”
The smile vanishes, her eyes meet mine; with one look she gives me the answer I already know.

But before I can tell her that I remember seeing her face when I looked into broken mirrors, before I can beg her to not get into the habit of turning her skipping rope into a noose, before I get the chance to say that love is not supposed to be fists to the skin, and rough hands around fragile necks;

I blink and she’s gone.

The smell of death seeps through the cracks of locked doors where you hide the side of yourself that you never let me see. I keep having search parties for the key but I've finally convinced myself that you buried it along with all the other hearts you've broken. The blood stains on the ceiling are reminders that in some cases the last place I want to go is up, and laying breathless at the bottom of a lake is a better way to drown out the sound of “I love you” seeping through your clenched teeth.
When I was 10 years old I first heard the word ‘anesthesia’ come from the mouth of my best friend whose mother died a year before, and she told me that it meant she was numb to everything. Nothing could make her feel anything which is probably why she danced with death and there were rope burns around her neck as she lay in a casket 3 years later.
It escaped my mouth for the first time yesterday when I saw you walking towards me with a smile on your face and a gun in your hand and the realization hit me before the bullet did; sometimes the side that is hidden from us is the side we’re trying to escape from. But my fear of death subsides every time I stand before you, why else do you think I ever let your mouth meet mine? The consequence is just as dangerous. You’re just as poisonous. There’s no way to escape this.
I find myself standing in the middle of busy streets where cars hit me but I don’t die. I find myself waiting for the train, but never at the station. I find myself in places and I can’t remember how I got there but death always looks me hungrily in the eye and loses its appetite as soon as it gets close enough to take my breath away.
I want to quit breathing, but I don’t. This feeling is so strong yet contradicting. So powerful yet, so nonchalant. It was last night as I lay on a bed with sheets covered in my blood that I came to a conclusion...death is my anesthetic, and you've been giving it to me in doses.