The Bottle in the Gas Station Cooler There is a gas station two miles from my house that I still cannot walk into without doing a small, silent inventory of myself first. Nothing about the building is dangerous. But the cooler along the back wall holds the same brand I used to buy by the case, and some nights, even now, years into a life I never thought I would get to keep, my hand still remembers the exact weight of that bottle before my mind catches up to remind me why I do not pick it up anymore. I used to think temptation was a moral test I kept failing because I was weak in some permanent, disqualifying way. I have come to see it instead as something closer to gravity, a pull built into a broken world that presses on every human being, saint and sinner alike. The years I spent white-knuckling my way past every craving on sheer determination were the years I fell hardest, because willpower is a finite thing, and temptation is patient enough to simply wait until mine ran out. ...