I wasn't born a junkie.

The dog licks the salt of my skin as I feel myself frying in the heat of the midday sun. I would move except I am inside and this isn't really happening. It is just a memory of a day when I stuck to the mattress with my hair matted against the back of my neck with the sweat that only come from a speedball stuffed between two little debbie pies and a flat beer I found from last night. The traveling kid told me his dog was friendly, friendly enough to steal my last piece of fried chicken before I could get the words out to not chew on the bones. I thought I said something but the xanax was talking for me. A lil something about "dkjtyfkuyflui;i" in between wondering if I had lost my ID so I could get my western union in the morning. I had to pee behind two cars. I almost missed my sock this time but I was a bit wobbly. I would change them if it wasn't for the fact that I am four bags deep. The only goal I can reach is scratching my skin to the exposed core of my loneliness.

OH HOW I WISH YOU WERE HERE. There was a time when we promised each other that our love would last- forever? Forever wasn't really that long ago baby, was it? As soon as I pulled that needle out of my skin, all the hellos in the world could not feel as good as this. You kissed me on my dry lips. I swore that I would never do it again (again and again and again). I am better off without you, I tell myself as I think about you walking away with someone else.

I wasn't born a junkie. What made me this way? Was it the vampire that made me- another lost soul that didn't want to experience death alone. They turned me out into the cold cruel reality of love in thirty units. It manifested into fifty now, eighty on a good day. Add the water, draw up the universe and pray this gets me. We are all interconnected through the brotherhood of the traveling spoon, of the constipation, the tiny pupils, the friendly discourse that comes as we wait on the same dealer. Of the artists without a canvas, the musicians with their equipment in pawn, and the frail kid in long sleeves serving cocktails so he can get a fix with his hard earned tips.

I wasn't born a junkie.
I don't need to die as one, either.
As long as the breath goes in and out, I have the capacity to change.

I am sitting here drinking a soy latte next to my cat in the house that I own, on the computer I just bought, and I'm sober. Things can change.



Below is me getting my mic for a feature on CNN on naloxone care packages. 


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