The Moment: Arsenic Wine

Sleepwalking, I stumbled upon glass of wine.

Burgundy juice, serenely resting in its crystal prison, not a ripple. I dipped a finger into it, shuddered, because it was cold. Like a nearly frozen lake in the middle of winter, I thought. My finger started to stir it: maybe I could make it warm.

Warm enough to drink.

But no, it was a futile effort and it can never be warm. He is too good to me, too noble to hide daggers behind silk curtains. "It'll be better. Less painful," he told me.

I withdraw my finger with a lonely droplet clinging on the tip of it. Without delay I drank it, like a thirsty traveler deprived of water for days. My head swirled: that was the very first symptom.

Instinct told me to flee and save myself, never to come back; yet curiosity drove me further to take a sip. As cold wine took over my throat, my senses numbed. Every swallow hurt, every cut deeper.

Yet I still went back for it. Perhaps I wanted to end it like this, with pain and misery. It's easier to give up this way, isn't it?

And I went back for more, and more, and more... Laughing at my naive folly as I drunk myself, indirectly, killing myself.