moonshine farrow, district seven

never let go.

the elegant, cursive words are scrawled in obsidian ink on the soft, fair skin on my right hip. the ink is infused with my tears and struggles and tribulation. it is a homemade mark i bear from every wretched thing hurled at me in life, a reward, almost, for surviving when my tiny heart, hollow and feeble with starvation, was about to give its final beat. (or perhaps it is a battle scar.) whatever it is, i earned it, after walking on a tightrope through hell - engulfed by ravenous flames - and pulling myself out (with several furious red streaks of scorched skin).

i am shocked i did not topple over the side the moment i began my treacherous walk with my bony little legs. (i should have.) but i found that there was strength and determination, born from pure will to survive against all odds, fortifying my bird-like frame.

my family and i rose from tattered, grimy clothes and old, perforated shoes, to dresses of white lace and leather lace-up boots and proper jeans. our success - my success - is all stemmed from liquid topaz and crystal clear liquids in glass bottles, liquids of fire that I make with my own small, delicate hands.

moonshine.

the word had first reached my ears as an infant, when my mother uttered the words, "moonshine farrow," naming me as a joke in the name of her late alcoholic husband. it was a sick joke that i would laugh bitterly about each time my mother called my name, and i would hurl a sarcastic response, mentioning something about how "fucked up" she is. but the origin of my name and the comical intentions behind it only crossed my mind the moment i heard whispers on the streets of moonshining - my mother neglected to tell me why she gave me such an unusual name or of its bitter meaning.

my kingdom of glass and amber scrapes the cerulean skies and tickles the clouds. from my throne of bottles, i reign over it with a smile, a wide curve of satisfaction. the flag of triumph, so high on the tower, billows in the breeze of earnings.

the foundation of the kingdom, constructed purely by determination and refusal to give into death, is arrays of sacks of corn meal and sugar and yeast. with my nimble fingers, gracing the shelves with silence, i swiped them off of their displays at the market, tucking them behind a tall stack of crates, obscuring them for me to retrieve in the night, before anyone could blink an eye. they were the keys to the door that remained sealed from my desperate grasp . . . and i held it in my hands.

there was a man - a drunkard - who lived down the street. his lawn was a kaleidoscope graveyard. bottles - red blue green brown clear golden - were littered in nearly every square inch of the nearly barren ground, the blades of grass like pieces of straw. i remember picking up the very first one - it was a ruddy brown color - and seeing my reflection, distorted by the curves of the bottle.

i saw sunken cheeks. i saw sallow skin. i saw poverty, in my very own reflection. my eyes, like a pair of pale jade stones, were hollow except for bared teeth of hunger and the unsheathed claws of desperation. the long, light brown hair with flaxen tones that sprouts from the top of my head was a mass of tangles. it was a coarse jungle of neglect and drought. each individual strand felt like a thin strip of sandpaper against the soft skin of my fingers. and i was locked on altering my malnourished appearance - and my ravenous siblings as well.

with each passing night, more and more bottles would fill my closet, overflowing to under my bed, until i could no longer cram anymore of them. making moonshine was a simple task. corn meal, sugar, yeast, and water was the mix that would pull my out of my impoverished state. and the final ingredient was time.

liquid gold - my future - was sitting in those bottles, waiting to be exchanged for lustrous coins from hands trembling with anticipation to obtain alcohol of any kind. on the black market, luxuries such as alcohol sold as quickly as a lightning bolt could rip across the sky. my pockets, filled with coins, felt as if they contained rocks.

money, though we were not rich and would never be, blessed us with a small, quaint stone cottage with a warm hearth and soft beds. there was food on the table and clean water in glasses by each place mat. starvation was a terror shrouded in the dust of the past; it would tear at us no longer.

the clothes that hugged our bodies with warmth lacked rips in the seems and the shoes that encased our feet were devoid of holes. the grime that had once marred our faces had been washed down the drain in a whirlpool of triumph. we would bow to destitution no longer; i had slayed the beast that had once hung over us, rendered powerless by my sword, a bottle of moonshine, and my armor of my own selfish drive to live. (i would choose to live even if it meant walking over a road of glass shards barefoot each day. i would prefer to writhe in searing agony than to fade to a memory.)

but i am no knight in shining armor - i never claimed to be. i am not a savior.

i am a selfish girl who wanted to live.

nothing more.