Seltzer is a funny thing, I think. I mean- it’s not like it makes me laugh, it’s just that it’s there and it exists and that its concept is the oddest thing to me.

Who thought water had to have joy and bubbles shoved into its molecules? Then, even after that, who thought the joy had to be flavored cherry grapefruit lime lemon cranberry and strawberry? Who thought that laughing and burping with gas and carbon wasn’t enough to just let it be, and instead had to shove more and more into something already full?

I drink seltzer a lot. It’s an odd thing- the first sip is always the easiest. It’s the one you look forward to the most, and it’s also the only sip that makes your eyes water because the carbonation is just so prominent. I never thought I’d cry because of a drink and yet here I am, drinking black cherry seltzer from a yellow straw and letting tears drip from my eyelashes like dew on the veins of a leaf.

The sips get harder as you keep going. At some point you’re so full of bubbles that swallowing liquid and letting it slip down your esophagus doesn’t happen because it’s just so difficult to make any more room after you’re full of something that you can’t even hold. 

I left a can of seltzer out the other day, completely by accident. It sat on my desk, half empty, for a good three nights. I think that from time to time I would pass it, lift it like I was about to throw it away, then put it down when I realized that there was still something in the can. Even though it’s summer and even though I don’t keep my AC on that much, the can was always cold. 

I think it stopped being fizzy at some point. I’m not sure. I didn’t drink any more of it.

But today, I dumped it into the potted plant on my windowsill, and I watched it spit flames and carbon into the air, shining in the daylight streaming through my blinds, and cried forlornly while taking a sip of another can for the first time when the cherry-flavored-joy water seeped back into the dirt. Gone.