Just a little ditty I wrote

My spine wilted over as my chest convulsed in the shower.  The steamy air tried to fight its way into my lungs but months of drug consumption kept it from mingling with my pinkish vessels.  I paused to rub the last of the night’s drinks out of my hair.  In a hacking fit I purged up a school of undulating jellyfish.  As these brainless masses spiraled around the stainless steel drain, the filtered shower light caught the speckled crystals of indulgence on their coagulate tops.  The dull aching between my legs reminded me of my lackluster indiscretion.  I turned to face the water and looking up into the light, slidding down. 

I decided that this soap wasn’t going to wash away my sins, which I reeked of.  I wrapped three plush towels around my body and emerged into the stale air of my room.  My eyes flashed with splotches of light as I braced myself against the wall.  I flinched with disgust as I remembered that I had broken the strap of my new Christian Dior Rasta Settle bag whilst using it as a rope in feeble attempt to scale the bar side.  I had also conveniently earned laughter and bruising as I plummeted, giggling all the way to the pavement.  At the time my cohorts and I found endless amusement in this feat.  Had this been a remote act there could have been some novelty in it, but since I had become an empowered and independent woman it was more of a practice.  I stumbled over to my desk and slid open the large tray center drawer.  My hands chopped wildly through Swarski crystal hair clips, old Chanel maracas and crumpled twenties.  The pills were coated bright orange so intoxicated and promiscuous girls such as myself could discern them in dim lighting from a tic-tac or a lexapro.  After a length of shuffling through my clutter I located them. 

The clothes layered on my made bed resembled a mosaic.  If I let gravity pull my body to mingle with my scattered wardrobe I would never emerge, so I slithered into my Love Sac.  My fingers bounce across the keyboard of my phone.  Apparently Rose was infuriated with me and although I didn’t pray at the altar of hysterics, this would be a time consuming amends.  Three texts from guys who wanted to “hook up” and one from Danni asking if I had enough mental faculties to be the conductor of a burn ride.  My alcohol saturated neck muscles ached and I craned my neck back into the velvety cover of my sac to alleviate it.  In my self inflicted exhaustion I could feel little marbles wedged uncomfortably in my back.  I lethargically debated whether I could conceivably live with the uncomfortable sensation, but there was just too many peas for my princess sensibilities to handle.  I clawed my hand under the small of my back and produced a round little bead.  Upon closer inspection the milky surface looked innately familiar.  My drug snarled wits, rusty from misuse tried to contextualize its presence.  What were these little eggs of discomfort?  The curiosity drove me to action.  I flipped open my mobile and held the glossy bead under the pale glow.  In the light of observance the bead turned out to be in fact not a bead at all but a pearl.  Another short expedition produced more of its compatriots.  It was as if I had all the pieces of a puzzle yet none of the experience necessary to place them together. 

Eureka is usually associated with a brilliant realization.  This case was different.  As I sat in a pile of the broken remains of my departed grandma Betty’s pearl necklace, I felt a surge of vomit and the hot spicy burn of tears.  After a speedy trip to the rest room I vaulted myself to the ground and frantically scramble to recover the lost treasure.  All said and done, I only recovered twenty-seven of the hundred some odd pearls that my grandmother had bestowed on me as a reminder of the love and respect she had for my promising youthfulness.  I sat sobbing with the relics of my keepsake, and let the thick coat of shame dry on my skin. 

I had grown up in the presence of my mother’s proud tales of how her family had survived the Great Depression.  My grandfather was hit with a Ford crossing the street in Rochester New York.  My grandmother was left poverty stricken, a shell of their former prestige.  She sold of all their generational Italian heirlooms, all but the pearl necklace which she defiantly had gone breadless for stretches at a time to preserve for her future kin.  I imagined if Betty happened to glance down now she would want to reanimate herself from the grave so that I could see the tears of hurt in her glassy loving eyes.  Here is where eureka occurred.  On the bedroom floor of my apartment, on 4:20 of a Friday afternoon, hold 72 less pearls of Grandma Betty’s necklace. It was there among the Smirnoff twist bottles and strewn change I decided it was time to start living with some intent and concerted thought.