I bring absinthe the way some people bring a book, they
haven't read. Half as proof, half as alibi. It's not that I wantto be drunk. I want to be filled. There’s a difference. Drunk is a blunt instrument. Full is a theory of the body. a soft bright pressure that says, YesI am here, I am taking up space, I am not apologizing for my pulse. I arrive holding the bottle. It's embarrassing, honestly. How much hope can you pour into a glass? I
can already see myself from above, a girl walking into a room trying to look casual while radiating the specific desperation of someone who wants to be remembered without having to become unrecognizable first. This is the part where I would tell you I’m chill. (I’m not chill.) I'm actively creating a scene in my head where someone says Who brought absinthe? and the room rearranges itself around me like I’m a new kind of furniture or something.
The party has its own weather. Humid laughter, thin compliments, the occasional cold front of someone's ex-lover. I stand there, and I can feel the familiar panic of being a person with a face. When you're anxious, your body is too visible. Everything becomes evidence. The way you hold your cup, the way you stand with your feet too close together, like you're afraid of taking up floor. I think maybe the green bottle is not a drink but an event. Maybe it's a ritual disguised as a party trick. I set the bottle down. I become very competent, which is always my tell.
I talk about cold water and slowness and the strange kindness of dilution, which is maybe the only way to live. By adding water to your intensity
until it becomes something you can actually taste. There’s an intimacy to watching liquid change. The clear turns cloudy, the green turns pale like a secret deciding to be visible. And while the drink becomes milky, the room watches, and for a second, everyone is quiet in the way people get quiet around fire. This is the moment I wanted. Not the intoxication, but the attention
that feels earned. I want to be the person who brings
transformation. I want to be the one with a little ceremony in her bag. But my mind, being my mind, immediately ruins it by narrating my own performance. Look at me, I am a witch of artisanal alcohol, I have brought theater to your IKEA coffee table. I can feel my soul rolling its eyes at me.
I take a sip.
It is bitter and shockingly alive, like recalling a memory you didn't know you had. It tastes like green things and old rooms and the part of yourself that gets lonely at parties. Then (this is the important part)I
feel the hunger underneath the hunger. The real thirst is for permission. Permission to be intense. I want someone to look at me and think There she is. Thats her. Shes real. The bottle doesn't do that. Of course it doesn't. A bottle is a bottle. It cannot carry you across the room and put you gently into someones attention. But it can make you pause. make you slow down long enough to feel
your own body again. People drink. They laugh. I watch everyone. I let the party
happen around me. Let my face be my face.