Tag: addiction

19 hours inside these yellow walls
and i can feel everything i had left
leave me

mom’s cheeks are sunken and sickly
she asks me if i know how much
a baggie costs; did she give you
too much money for gas?  

and you,
you are angry
and you scare the shit out of me.
i’m scared
i’m going to hate you, too.

we are out shopping and
mom tells me she found
a needle in your desk drawer
as we pick out strawberries.

i don’t know how to reach you.
when you shut your bedroom door
you shut me out, too
sometimes i fear your limbs
will grow into your bedsheets. 

i love you, don’t you understand
i love you?

i flip through the channels at 2 am 
and can’t watch cartoons even 
though all i want is to laugh
because i know i will
cry instead 

and i’m sorry, i’m so
sorry i don’t understand

how we can be from the same womb,
the same hands holding ours
as we crossed the street,
the same health ed class, the
same high school, the
same town, two different
worlds.

it is the hardest thing to miss someone
who is still right in front of me.

2 worlds // a.s.m

you’d heard the phrase “to love is to suffer” so you weren’t exactly surprised when the first time you saw his eyes you had stained the sheets red. but you had been so ready to cradle him in your arms and feel his beating heart that you ignored it. 

twenty two years later you’re looking through his desk drawers while he’s out; not quite sure what you’re looking for, but knowing there must be a reason his eyes have looked so golden lately. there must be a reason he’s out so damn much.

when you hear the news, all you can think of is his heart, once so small and fragile. that heart that used to beat within your own body is now beating arrhythmically to the sound of train tracks on his arms. and you remember ‘to love is to suffer,’ yet you had never thought it would consume you so much. 

you never knew that loving him would mean he would suffer, too. that often you’d hug him so hard, you’d leave a bruise. or that you’d love him so much, sometimes you’d try to save him from being himself.

to love is to suffer (Heroin, Pt. III) // a.s.m

we’re pressing pause
with ocean water on our faces. 
you’re pressing play
with syrup in your veins. 
this ship is going down;
one by one 
we throw you our life
jackets so you may stay afloat– 
we’re already sinking anyways. 

large waves are hitting us now, 
water blanketing the floor. 
you throw your head back and laugh
and jump overboard. 
all lifejackets with us, even 
yours. 
nothing we had could 
save you.

Heroin, Pt. III: Relapse // a.s.m

you’re close enough to me
that i can see your eyes,
but they are
somewhere far away
from here. and so we sit
on the couch in silence,
me reading my book, you
staring into space and repeating
the same five lines from a song
i don’t know.
i really do feel like you’re on some
other side, you know.
mom’s crying on the kitchen floor,
stabbing holes into
cellophane because
at least when grandma died,
her body didn’t haunt us anymore.

Heroin, Pt. II // a.s.m

you have been used
by the world for too long.
your edges are
becoming soft. you are collapsing
under the
weight of this world
while giving him a piggyback.
you must let him hit
the ground before he can learn how
to pick himself back up.
you can’t chase him through the
playground anymore, he is lost
in mazes you would never be able
to escape from.
you cannot help him
find the way out when you are
just as lost yourself. 

run away
from the place he’s landed.
take time to develop the strength
to breathe
life back into his lungs
for when he finally decides
he wants to live again.

for Nectar in regards to my brother’s heroin addiction: i know you are his mother, but you cannot do anything to help him until he is ready to help himself. // a.s.m

I. i saw your jar full of wrappers
and thought maybe you’d just developed
a sweet tooth recently. though
it never occurred to me that
white waxy wrappers
can carry
fun-dip powder and pixy stix, too. 

II. i knew something
was wrong when
clouds fogged your eyes (grey and heavy
with rain);
so heavy
they could not look straight.
so heavy
they kept sinking. 

III. at half past midnight you left
to ‘be right back.’
45 minutes later and i felt the thunder
shake the house; i knew
there would be rain 
in your eyes. 
At eight forty-five the next morning 
(you normally never wake up before eleven), 
you ‘stop at a friends’
before breakfast and return 
empty-handed but eyes full, 
veins full, blood full 
of calm, full of ocean waves and 
lullabies, full of 
ice so cold you feel like you’re 
on fire. 

IV. you are forgetting 
more and more 
about me these days. it seems
you’re drifting farther away, 
farther into
your veins. 

V. i know that
i don’t know
how your mind rolls
on the tracks in your skull.
i never will
feel the hunger in your veins
for a needle that bites 
so good. but every time a new
track mark paints your arm,
the train that’s riding them
runs over my heart.

for alex: i see you dissolving in front of me and am not sure what i’m supposed to do. // a.s.m

please please please stop building
these walls just so that you can tell me
i’m crossing the line.
remember when we shared a
womb for nine months?
there were no lines then, just
innocence and warmth. i want
to take you back there.

remember when the doctor explained why
you were so small and weak when you were born?
i took
all the nutrients from the placenta.
i took
your strength, and i wish i could
give it back to you now because
i’m scared to see you fall
knowing i cannot do anything to save you.
i want this to be my fault.
i want to take away this
darkness within you and burn it myself
so i cannot watch
you crumble.

i wish i could transfuse to you all
i’ve learned from the scars
on my arms and thighs and the heartbreak
i’ve been given and the heartbreak i’ve caused
so that you wouldn’t have to feel it all.
i am standing with my hands up
ready to surrender myself in your place, but
i know i cannot do your time
when the prison is within the walls of your mind.

for my brother, Alex: i want to save you from your addiction, but i know you have to learn how to fight it on your own. please know how much i love you. // a.s.m

My therapist once told me that overcoming an addiction is a daily battle: I will always crave a cigarette on my lunch breaks, and I will always instinctively reach for a razor blade when life is on overdrive. Every day is a war with my mind to not give in to itself. I wonder if it’s going to be like that with you, too. I wonder if every day I will fight not to pick up the phone just so I can hear your voice.

people are drugs, too // a.s.m