Dear Lover, by Lori Jenessa Nelson - HTML preview

Dear Lover,

You’re gone, my appetite in your suitcase. I’ve classified vodka and wine as the most suitable food group for this diet that I have started on: loneliness and depression. I googled it, someone wrote a whole book on it, The Alcoholics’ Diet. I can’t be an alcoholic if I know I drink too much and know when to stop but keep going because I keep seeing you everywhere. Being drunk is like a dreamless sleep, and it’s the only time that I can escape you and the way you made me feel unlovely.

I’ve been shrinking. I feel my heart is not within me, I exist outside of myself, but my chest burns still, and continuously. I’ve switched from gin back to vodka to give the nothingness an impressionistic texture this time.

In this abstract, I don’t see my face in the reflection. There are red eyes as liquid as the rum I have been drowning in. At least the rum is still beautiful. I evaporate continuously. But the mornings are unlovely. Invasive sunlight and mocking birds shower me with an acid joy I cannot digest with my appetite packed in the floor of your suitcase, and my heart trapped under your heel.