^"Hello?"

^{It all starts with the extended eye contact. Then, next thing you know, they're pouring you another glass out of the second, no, the third bottle of wine, and they're dragging you into the bathroom, and stripping you down, and they're throwing you in the shower and scrubbing you with expensive soaps and pads with hard to pronounce French names.}

^{Have you been sick before? Are you sick now?} 

^{How many times have you done this?}

^{So the shower ends, they believe that they've made you clean again, they believe that they've washed the stench of living off of you, they believe that you don't still reek of all of the alcohol you've imbibed. They believe, so they move to kiss you, but it's blurry now, the lights are so bright, and if it happens, you can't remember.}

^{If anything has changed, you've failed to notice, because, after all, this is the vessel that you reside in and these are the battle scars to prove that you've lived. That you've loved, that you've lied, that you've bent hearts and have had yours bruised. That it all fades into memory, and to a point that you can't remember a name with the face, or a situation with a date, or what their feet looked like.}

^{Then, one day, you're waking up, the sun is in your eyes, you take note that it's always going to be that way, be it bathroom lights or stadium lights or some life-giving star that you've taken for granted; you'll always have the glare blinding you, the tears to blur your vision, the drowsiness of sleep resting upon those lids. That day is the day that it all suddenly matters; for you've planted no garden, no flowers, you've written no novel. You’ve stockpiled so little for the winter, and much less for posterity, it's already growing late in the day.} 

^{You can still smell the alcohol in your hangover, it's there, written on your eyelids and inside the echoes in your memory - you can taste it in your throat; it's telling you that no matter what you did, you can't be right, that no matter how you've changed, you haven't changed enough. That you never will.}

^{But today is a new day! The songs will be played again (perhaps, with courage), the stars, tonight, they will shine brighter than they have before, these things that are so like anchors to you - you will drag them painfully in, breaking the skin in the process, or you will unapologetically heave them overboard, leaving them behind, forever, lost into the abyss.}

^{So I question: are you in? Or, even now, are you making an escape overboard?}

^{Her voice echoes.}