Arsenic

There is a faucet in my home.

I suppose that’s a good thing. I’ve got a faucet.

After all, I need water, and the faucet spits out water for me to drink. Not everyone has a faucet. But I do.

Thing about my faucet is that the water has arsenic in it.

You’d think that, living in the United States, the faucets wouldn’t be permitted to spit out arsenic. But it does it all the same.

So every time I drink the water, I think about the arsenic. I wonder how many years it’s cutting off my life. What sorts of physical pains it might put me through, given long enough to build up in my body.

When it might finally kill me.

I’ve tried everything.

I have friends with faucets, and some of their faucets spat out arsenic in the past. They’ve managed to install filters, underneath the sink, which can separate the arsenic from the water, and which allow them to drink the water from their faucets safely.

I can’t get under my sink, though. I’ve tried. At first I thought that maybe it was locked. Perhaps there was something behind the doors that keeps them shut, maybe to keep children out. Maybe to keep me out.

But I couldn’t find anything like that.

I wondered if anyone else knew how to open the sink. I asked some of the people in my family for help.

They couldn’t open it either.

I even tried pulling on it with all of my weight, with the hopes that maybe I could just snap the lock in half, or tear the doors off their hinges, and finally break in to install the filter and finally, after years, stop the arsenic from spilling out of the faucet.

I’m not strong enough.

I’ve given up.

That filter will never be installed. No matter what I do, that faucet will always spew arsenic.

So the only way to keep myself safe is not to drink it. Not to drink water at all. To protect myself from the stomach-churning fear, that ever-present thought lurking in my head, that the arsenic will get me this time. That I’ll have to face the arsenic if drink the water. I’m giving it access to me.

But then, how am I supposed to live without the water? I need the water. Else my heart stops. Else my synapses stop firing. Else I cease to exist.

So I drink the poison. Every single day.