edith, district eight; fin cb

tw: alcoholism

I tread along the shaky path that my mother once did, skipping across the crooked stones in a rhythm of her smashing bottles on the kitchen floor. My steps are a perfect mold of hers, a seamless match to her footprints outlined in the sticky mud - I'm afraid that I'll die too.

Afraid, terribly afraid, that I'll become a mirror of her flawed self, and that my ungodly reflection will tear through the echo and drag me into the void. And I'll be nothing more than a memory, a faded photograph on a mantelpiece where I looked happy, content with life for once. Just like her. Have a big, happy family and golden piano fingers, and then just drink it all away. Sorrows can only be drowned out for so long.

I don't want to be my mother's daughter.

I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't.

But I play the piano and my father says, his voice cracking, that it reminds him of my mother and then I look down and see her staring up at me from the black surface of the piano. And somewhere in there, I cry until there are no tears left and I'm just shaking. The next day, I rip every single key from its hinges on the piano and smash them into irreparable pieces.

I find a bottle at the bottom of the pantry cabinet, tucked behind a few boxes. It was hidden for a reason, a good one, but like a moth to a flame, I'm pulled to it. I hold it tight in my hands, teetering on the edge of a sharp blade. Do I or do I don't? A push and pull. Can I save myself from self-destruction? Or perhaps death is my birthright.