shecantbreathe

It glowers slightly on the corner of the table, the sunlight slanting just enough to ignite the bottle of caramel colored liquid.  The liquid tips to the corner as the door opens and shuts.
She had been in her car, her friends laughing about something Jonathan said on Valentine's Day.  She smiled and laughed and if it had been caught on camera, it would have seemed genuine.  The kind of smile that if you would have taken a second, closer look, you would have seen a mirror of inexplicable  sadness.  A facade.
Inside of the door, she stills and lets the door slam shut behind her.  No.  Dear God, not again.  Bottles line the floor and the countertops.  Take one breath.  But she can't.  She can't breathe.  She can't breath.  Shecantbreathshecantbreathshecantbreath.  She rushes too fast to the cabinet on the opposite side of the room, knocking the bottle on the table over in the process.  She slams open the cabinets, the wood cringing and snapping at the hinges as she rummages crazily through the kitchenware.  She finds the water bottle, the coffee canteen.  She finds the prescriptions, almost empty. Shecantbreath.
Outside, she sits on the porch, her head in her hands.  The bottle sits by her, the pills just below.  She debates in her head.  She screams in her mind until the blood boils in her ears and threatens to drain.  In a moment of insanity, she grasps the bottle, kicks the pills away and storms to the center of the street.  The sun is setting on the worst day of her life.
It seems almost slow motion.  She raises the bottle over her head and smashes it to the ground with the force of a broken heart.  The glass shards spin up and slice her shins, one catches her cheek but shecantbreatheshecantbreatheshecantbreathe.
Inside her room she wonders.  She wonders and breathes and cries the cry of only one who has seen life destroyed.  Oh, and not just her own.
She lays on her bed, her dark hair flows behind her like a hurricane.  She tosses and turns and stands.  She grabs something from atop her nightstand and walks furiously to her mirror.  Uncapping the red lipstick she keeps for when she feels the urge to look apart from her mother, she scrawls words madly on the pane of glass and shecantbreatheshecantbreatheshecantbreathe.
"You destroyed me.  Left alone.  Drunk.  Why."
The words look like blood to her, the kind that isn't pulled involuntarily.
She turns to her room and hates it.  Hates her.  Hates me.  She wrenches the pillows and blankets from her already unmade bed and sobs until her chest heaves and shecantbreatheshecantbreatheshecantbreathe.  Sitting in the center of her bed, she can't feel her skin.  She doesn't want it.  She claws and rips at her clothes, her chest, her hair.  She smears her makeup and melts it into tears.  No more.
She jumps into her car and drives without a destination.  She slams her fist against the steering wheel and hopes that the world can see which the opposite of what she usually wants.  The night has grown darker than she is used to but shecantbreathshecantbreatheshecantbreathe.  She winds the slopes to the lights she remembers made her feel better.  The lights look like the world, but only coming from the breath she can see in front of her face.  It looks like happiness, but the kind only some people believe in.  It looks nice, just like she wanted.  But shecantbreatheshecantbreatheshecantbreathe.
Home again.  She doesn't want to be.  Remove the makeup.  Remove the skin.  Remove the emotions.  Sit on the now completely made up bed, the newly washed mirror and smile.  Because that's what they expect you to do.