It was a great bottle – tall and lean. I was feeling this pain, not in my stomach, but in my chest and my mind. It was something like a heartbeat, steady and persistent, but it wasn’t a natural, painless beating; it was a torturous one. It put pressure on my lungs with each breath and a quick, unnatural sting through the edges of my skull down to the bridge of my nose between my heavy eyes. The bottle in my hand could feel it too. I could see the tall clear liquid pulsating as I placed it on the coffee table in front of me. This wasn’t my bottle. This wasn’t my apartment. This was a different realm and I knew I felt safe. It started to beg through a nonverbal voice, some kind of energy. It started to look like a medicine bottle, so I took it back in my hands and reached in my corduroys, which were starting to sag. My money was running low and this job was going to be an easy one. Just sit here, maybe feed the fish, but definitely water the plants. They were only goldfish, and I could see them sitting on the side table next to me, circling the bowl, and I wondered if they would remember me. I wondered if they had some sorts of lenses in those large, bulging eyes. I wasn’t scared of that so much. It didn’t matter if they saw me, did it? I started to envy them, wondered if I poured some of the bottle in there, if they’d swim around happily like I wish I could, basking in complete weightlessness. Feeling a buzz in each neuron to make our heads stop aching. They started to make me feel dizzy, them circling like that, so I pulled the bottle opener from my pocket and swerved the small knife around the top to remove the plastic shield. I started to put the swirl of metal through the cork and I started to imagine that cork as my brain, it was the same color anyways, and the wood reminded me of the body of the large plants on the porch. It made a large pop as I pulled out the cork and I poured the cool liquid into the glass and watched it grow tall. It was such a cheap bottle, but it was easy.

And then I looked as the bottle became two and vacant, and that made the pit of my stomach not so light because it felt like the world became empty again and there was no refilling of the world because it was already full of loneliness again. I went to the porch and straight to the plants that leaned up against the edges like a barrier. The jungle was tall, but not so tall that I couldn’t see across the city. I started to take the leaves in my fingertips, felt their softness and rubbed my fingers from the stems to the tips, hoping to soak in the dew. They were dry though and I realized I hadn’t given them anything to fill the soil for a few days. I thought about taking the remainder of the glass and pouring it into my favorite plant, the dying one, its leaves collecting at the bottom of the pot on top of the soil. The tenants told me it needed the most attention, the most water and the most trimming and the most talking to, but I couldn’t bear to help something that was already nearly dead. It was like it was asking to be put into a new, more prosperous cycle of life.

I leaned over the ledge and saw those tall buildings in the distance with their lights dimmed and their curtains pulled closed. I wondered if she was out there watching me with thick binoculars, hoping that I’d finish that glass with one large gulp and I wanted to, but I knew that would make her get that smug smile and bright set of eyes. Then I looked over the ledge and the concrete looked so comforting, like a feather bed and I thought if I accidentally fell, I would just bounce back up and be thrown into space and fly and fly and float and I’d even take a star in my hand and put it to my cheek and hope that it would warm me again, like the heat from a heart-filled palm.