I used to drink grape juice every day. Mornings, afternoons, sometimes before bed if my parents let me. It was sweet, dark, thick enough to feel like something important. I drank it from plastic cups with rubber lids, cups that I clutched with two hands. It made my fingers sticky, my lips purple. I didn't care.
Then one day, I stopped.
It wasn't a decision, just something that happened. The way childhood ends, not with a declaration but with small omissions. One day the grape juice in the fridge ran out, and no one bought more. I never asked why.
Since then, things have changed. My parents split. My aunt died. I switched schools, twice. Got into Columbia. Beethoven, my cat, died, and then both my grandfathers. I signed a record deal. I lost friends and gained them. Fell in and out of love. Yesterday was my birthday.
And still, I haven't had grape juice.
I think about it sometimes. At the grocery store, standing in front of rows of bottles, I let my eyes skim past it. It's always there, unchanged. But I don't reach for it. Maybe because I know it won't taste the same, or maybe because it will, and that's worse.
I wonder if the unraveling started the day I stopped drinking it. If some version of me — smaller, surer — left with it. Or if I've just been waiting, all this time, for the right moment to bring it back.