My, How We Are Thirsty

Days of Lemons and Daffodils

Any night I find lemonade in the fridge, I can't figure out how not to revert into a crackhead. After one sip, all I can think of is another. Its too good to stop. Sleep is a passive aggressor and never convincing enough to deter me from the self-appointed mission, in such cases:

drink all the lemonade in the fridge.

Sure, tomorrow will proceed this night and my love for lemonade will not wane; and sure I could do, tomorrow, with some of the euphoria that sizzles in my brain when I drink the naturally squeezed sour-made-sweet drink; but why concern myself with tomorrow when the night and the lemonade are both here, presently.

Drink all the lemonade in the fridge.

It becomes a command, one which I take seriously. It becomes a law and I, its most faithful of officers. A nebulously, grayish-yellow liquid, as if a cloud of sun became a beverage that pours onto a cup like a god into a miracle; a holy communion becomes the quenching of a thirst. Only its not the thirst of a dry tongue or throat, not the deprivation or dehydration that can drain a body, like a fish out of water, and kill it. This thirst is not much like that, if at all. This is the thirst of addiction, of chemicals in the brain recognizing a familiar chemistry and associating with it, the most welcomed of lemonade memories. The sour-made-sweet yesterdays. Its sweetness and all its delights, excessively craved, sought, and possessed only for a few seconds before it fades as you sigh out a momentary satisfaction. But before you know it, the satisfaction is gone, for you can't have your lemonade and drink it too.

Still this doesn't stop me from trying, sometimes all night. Each time hoping some physical anomaly will take pity on me and allow me both, my possession and my drink.