When I was first created, it was believed that I only could be constructed from three primary ingredients. No, no, I am not talking about sugar, spice, and everything nice – that is how you make girls. My recipe is not sweet, it is nefarious. I will give you a hint, my secret fourth ingredient was yeast. Get it? No? Alright, well I am beer. I get boiled with hops, barley, and water. Then they toss critters into me. It is at that point – when the alcohol starts to appear – that I would call my birth.
But I digress, my birth isn’t important, nor is my transportation to this fine establishment. Rather, it is what is currently happening to me as time goes on. I was cut into pieces when I was bottled, and I got over it as I grew to love my smaller self. My bottle – she is brown – was a good conversationalist but there was always a little jealousy in her voice.
The first time she said this to me, “At least you get to live on, keep going, I get tossed away like a piece of trash.”
I responded poorly, considering she let me live inside her, “Well you are trash, once I am gone.” I immediately regretted it, but I had taken a very human perspective in regards to what a container becomes when it doesn’t contain anything.
Little did I know, I was slowly being deconstructed in the human body. I just found it fantastic to be tickled by the man’s gray and black whiskers. Some of me would hang out on the top of his lip, then the tongue would sweep by, and off part of me went. During this split – with part of me in him and part of me in her – I wasn’t able to see what was happening inside the body. Each gulp was a death sentence. I didn’t know this! And, hell, I didn’t sign up for it.
Eventually, I was gone and slipping down the torrent of his esophagus. My friend was now in the garbage with her kin. They would gab all the way to the dump and, well, continue to survive for hundreds of years. Me, I was destined to be torn apart molecule by molecule as his body stripped me for my nutrients. I now knew how the label – the one on the bottle – had felt as he picked at the corners until he could tear it off. The label, had screamed as part of him stayed stuck to the adhesive. Me, I screamed too, but all my screams did was cause him to belch. Nothing beats hitting the liver with disappointment. Well, farewell. Maybe, if you look closely, you will see part of me in his urine.