by Erin Ajello
December is death,
and I know that as strongly as I have known that since I was only sixteen years old because it’s the month we lost him and now his mother has passed as well and now I know no more branches on this family tree that has already fallen, already been cut down and disappeared and turned into wood for something else, something living but not alive.
December is death,
and I remember it as blurrily as I can remember the first time I got blackout drunk and woke up the next morning on a couch I hadn’t seen the night before, feeling terrified and alone and just fucking awful until I got my friend to wake up and tell me how many times I vomited and whose name I kept slurring as another friend held my small but usually sturdy frame over the toilet until my insides were as empty as I’d always known them to be.
December is death,
and I wince when I think of that damn cold month last year, when I lay in bed missing classes I would later fail sobbing with a 103 fever and the fear that my weak body would once again give out to match my weak mind and my love saw me truly scared for the first time as I told him what even a fever deluded girl was still rightfully scared of.
December is death,
and I cannot imagine why death keeps avoiding me when I wait for her these freezing 31 days of misery, begging her to notice me, drinking until I can almost hear her calling me, slicing myself open in the hopes of teasing her until she cannot take the temptation anymore and just takes me instead but she never takes me instead and
December is death to those I love.
