Molly Seeling By Molly Seeling
CW: alcoholism
My dearest Pixie,
I never actually caught your name, or maybe I did but was too heart-thumped shaking to remember, so, my apologies. I remember your tousled hair, though—short Pepto-Bismol pink with gold feathering at the roots, too cheerful-trendy for this grim place. From then on you were Pixie to me even though we never got to speak again after that first night. Sorry if this is coming out wrong. This is harder than I thought.
At the meeting you approached me cautiously like I was an arrow-pierced deer in need of gentleness but also like I might trample you if you made a wrong move and I suppose both of those things were true. Desperation in my deer eyes, flightful fury in my sharp-edged hooves. Fluorescent tubes casting seedy light over my mortally wounded self.
“I like your pants,” you offered.
I looked down at my stupid legs, which were only clothed in stupid jeans. There is no way you liked my pants; you were just digging for something kind, which I recognized, but appreciated nevertheless. Your voice was casual refreshing calm as a creek passing through a sun-flashed meadow, like this was just another normal conversation, which it was not, at least not for me, not then. I had been bracing for some gritty despondent topic of which there are many, because this after all was a meeting for despondent people. The chairs around us were being folded by helping hands. You looked far too young for this shit but then again I suppose so was I.
My shaking hands were out of control really trembling and maybe it was my flayed nerves or maybe the shaking was part of it, which, after all, was why I was there though I had not yet admitted this aloud. Was that why you came over, because you saw me silent curling my ink-dark cloud around me like a threatened squid in the corner, while the others listed gratitudes and recited prayers?
“Is this your first time?”
I only nodded because if I parted my lips I knew I would cry.
“You’re going to be okay.” When you gripped my hand your eyes were the clearest flash of bottle green, no not flash something steadier and unwavering, a glow almost, but no that makes it sound like you were some kind of mythical creature when of course you were simply a human which was not yet a title I felt like I deserved for myself.
“Here’s my number. Call me if you need anything. Anytime, I mean it.” You scribbled it in the back of the blue AA book they had given me at the door although you forgot to add your name which is why you were still Pixie. When you hugged me it was true. Your flamingo hair smelled of sandalwood which is now my favorite scent, something that makes me think of hope. I dreaded to think what I myself might have smelled like when you hugged me and I was so ashamed I wanted to push you away but I didn’t.
What I didn’t tell you is what brought me there, although whatever I might have told you you’d have already known because that was why you were there too. So I’ll tell you now.
What brought me there not in general but specifically that day was ash. Ash trapped in my arm hair, embers freckling my skin with burn marks as I flicked my cigarette out the window while going eighty down the highway—also I should mention I was crying while smoking these cigarettes, not brushing away the embers scorching my skin while Nine Inch Nails whisper-screamed about being Hurt. I tried the Johnny Cash version which was fine but his voice was too stoic when what I really needed was cardiac war drums to shatter my heartbeat pierce my liver with spears of electric guitar while I sobbed and smoked and sped down that black river of asphalt. I was desperate and needed music that made me feel like I was dying which in a way I knew I was. Maybe oncoming traffic would collide with me swallow me up in a ball of flame but this was the highway, all the lanes pouring in the same direction, so oncoming traffic was unfortunately not an option. Not that I actually meant it.
At four pm the last of the tequila was still in my system: tequila blood tequila bone marrow tequila tears. A deadly parasite, overtaking all parts of my body. I hadn’t drunk since the night before but at that time I chugged plenty, enough to apparently last me through four pm which was now. It crossed my mind that I might as well just continue because four was a decent-people time to start drinking and who would know and who would care anyway?
But on my phone there was a list of places, a list of meetings. And I had kept that browser window open for days. I had been unable to close the tab but equally unable to even glance at the list as if each letter was a blacksmith brand being held above my open eyeballs. Pixie I did do this all while hurtling down the highway, I know it was irresponsible but I want to be honest because this is something I’m learning. I did look at my phone while hurtling down the highway drunk and crying, this is both true and irresponsible but it saved my life because I ended up with you.
In the windowless room you caught my eye, because you were young and beautiful sure but also because you looked Happy. And the people I did not expect to see at this last-ditch meeting included young people, beautiful people, and people who looked like they might truly be Happy, let alone all three. So please know I already appreciated you then, even before you lied about the pants.
I don’t recall specifically what people said, but as I listened, my heart exploded in fireworks of recognition, great dazzling bursts of clarity, multifaceted diamonds of clarity held up to the sunlight throwing rainbows of unprecedented understanding all across the walls of this grim room. I felt like a soldier barely clinging to life but finally delivered to the medics, stretcher-carried under the safe dove wings of their white tents, realizing with a desperate sliver of optimism that I might not after all die. Maybe I could be saved maybe I could save myself.
It wasn’t you who pressed the coin into my palm but it felt like the coin came from you anyway so this is how I like to think of it, my coin from Pixie. I hope you don’t mind but I’ve since given it away.
Next time I went back, I looked for you. The list of meetings didn’t feel quite so much like a death sentence this time, maybe just a list, nothing more. I wanted you to see that I came back, if you even remembered me which maybe you wouldn’t, despite your kindness. I hoped you’d see me sitting there in a folding chair and understand I had not chosen oncoming traffic or a tequila drowning but I didn’t see your hair or your face for that matter. But I stayed at the meeting anyway. And then I came back again.
It was weeks before I tried your number because I still wasn’t sure about the etiquette and I didn’t want to seem too forward. It rang and rang. The third and fourth and fifth time I tried, the bells were still hollow-ringing but somehow I kept going to meetings anyway and this helped a lot more than I thought it would.
I had been sober for thirteen months when I heard. Diamond clarity sober, trench-gutted fingernail-clawed bleeding-out-being-resurrected sober.
“Did you ever know Emily?” someone asked me, Melinda if I’m being honest. I know first names are fine but still I’m hesitant to speak them because I finally want to do everything right and after all it’s supposed to be anonymous. “Some of us are headed over there after the meeting, if you want to come. It’s today.”
“Emily?”
“Pink hair?” Melinda ran a hand over her crown where a pixie cut might be and then I knew it must be you. Wherever we were going, it was we then because of course I’d come. I had so much to tell you if you even remembered me which I doubted you would but it didn’t matter as much these days because I was starting to be okay. It wasn’t just you, it turns out many people there were radiant with contentment, some of them even young like us who would have guessed. Everyone brought you flowers, carnations daisies something that looked like a bunch of freckled pink bells on a stem I’m not sure. The lawn spread out before us emerald green and velvety lush, sparkling with sprinkler dewdrops.
It was the first anniversary of your death.
“A drunk driver. I’m sorry if you hadn’t heard,” Melinda explained quietly. Isn’t that fucking terrible unfair irony but I think a part of me already knew. The ravenous ghosts in my blood screamed that the driver might have been me could have been me what if it was me, even though it wasn’t. The truth is I think I already knew about you because a sacred damaged part of us was connected, identical in whatever ways matter because we’re all the same here this much is true.
How are there so many of us?
That alone is a tragedy, too much brokenness, that we would all of us have these ghosts howling for vodka for annihilation to fill our veins with liquid nothingness. The world is a rough and desperate place Pixie I’m certain you know this as do I.
We gave you the flowers, meaning we fanned them out in a branch-feathered warm patch of sunlight on your granite block which was, in fact, stamped with Emily and not Pixie but regardless. I didn’t have the cash for magenta flowers so instead this letter is for you.
It’s funny, I gave your chip away just before I heard the news. At the end of a meeting, which now all feel like hallowed joy, there was a girl trying to silently sink away into a black cloud in the back row and I knew. I knew everything even if I didn’t know the specifics yet. She looked like she wasn’t sure if she would trample me or eat from my hand and I understood it was likely it was both. But I could approach her as a genuine human which I could never say about myself before because I’m no longer drowning in tequila or anything else for that matter. My capsized soul is beginning to right itself. Maybe those rooms aren’t actually grim, maybe they’re lovely I might have been wrong. Pixie, I knew her just like maybe you knew me. I gave her your coin, pressed it into her palm with the phrase 24 hours—one day at a time ridging under my thumb.
She has it now, I saw her rubbing it with her shaking fingertips, a flash of silver hope. I hope you don’t mind that I gave it away. I don’t even have to ask really. Something tells me you approve.
Molly Seeling is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker based near Boulder, Colorado. Her work has been published in Vast Chasm Magazine, Landing Zone Magazine, and Spry Literary Journal. She recently celebrated eight years sober, and she is represented by Katie Grimm and Don Congdon Associates.
Why we chose this piece: We love Molly’s voice, the epistolary format, the chaotic sentence structure, the pacing, and the characterization. It all just works. This story carries a lot of vulnerability, and she balances humor and darker emotions so well.
