-Sailor’s Delight

 

Silver cans clinking in a row. One falls down, SPLASH! Goes the brown and yellow liquids. A smell fills the air and makes the small girl sick. The girl looks at the cracked silver cans and cries. She tries to pick one up, but red soon mixes with the yellow and brown.

The girl grows up, hating the smell of the liquid. She hates the fact people could drink such a dreadful thing. Others look at her sceptically. The liquid makes fun, it holds people down and brings people up. The smell gives the girl headaches. She tries to run from the dull pain and tries to run from their judgemental glares and glances. The cans follow her.

Clink, clink, clink, go the cans and slosh, slosh, slosh goes the liquid, following the girl through her life, tempting her with their affects and pressure. She sees the cans and shivers. The dull ache returns and she remembers silver cans and orange tic tacs surrounded with smoke. She remembers yelling and screaming and it echoes in her mind as she once again walks away from those stupid silver cans.

She speaks her mind, she is shut down. People treasure the liquid, they feed off of the money made. That’s all they care about. Money, money, revenue, the precious economy, not the underlying health issues. They don’t see what they are doing to themselves. They only see what the liquid makes them see. They see swirling lights and twisting souls when they are crossing a road, cars approaching and not slowing down. They see the people they lost bellow them and they try to jump to say goodbye but they join them in the world they know, a sinking casm of cold blue. They see an orange canister of candy but when they eat it, it poisons them.

The girl sees the silver cans everywhere. Empty, full, overflowing, the cans sit, waiting. She goes to pick one up, but the agonized screams stop her, she leaves them lying in the dirt, slowly soaking the ground with the foul liquid.

The silver cans turn into little glass bottles, shattering on impact. The bottles hurt more than the cans. They hold even more. The bottles are green and dark brown and they always smell so innocent until they are opened. The girl slowly starts to crack like the bottles and eventually, she has a bottle to her lips. She takes a sip, and another, and another, and slowly succumbs to the darkness.

 

The class sits in silent after hearing the story the young girl told. One child raises his hand, “Why are you so against alcohol?”.

 

The girl responds,

“My life was simple. I had a mother who I lived with and a father I loved. But I only ever had one set of grandparents. When I asked my mother why this was, I found out about the drinking and the smoking. Turns out my grandparents thought it was more important to spend more time in liquor stores than to spend that time with their family.”