<\/p>\n
My friend’s wife has a certain power.\u00a0 A queen in a land without royalty.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, things move differently for me.\u00a0 As I step outside of the regular stream of
\nevents and just watch things stream by on fast forward.\u00a0 Rum and coke to my lips, legs crossed, the
\nsun rising and lowering behind me, the plants twisting towards it, as beautiful
\nwomen and friends I love duck down and lift babies into the air, and pause.<\/p>\n
My glass touches the table as lightly as I can manage.\u00a0 My eyes turn up.\u00a0 I look into the gathering darkness of the
\napartment.\u00a0 I sit back.\u00a0 Begin again.<\/p>\n
Sometimes things move a little too fast.\u00a0 The bottle of rum empties without anyone
\ntouching it, the dark liquid boiling, shuddering.\u00a0 My glass empties and fills, the hint of a hand
\ntaking it away and returning it, but nothing I can focus on.<\/p>\n
This is the song of an addict. But alcohol is not an
\nenemy.\u00a0 My fight is against prescribed
\ndrugs.\u00a0 The paper-thin, wounded, decaying
\nmedicated wall between life and pain.\u00a0 In
\nthe spring, drifting out of my latest pain episode, I kick the relaxants
\nprescribed to bring me out of bed and back into the human world.\u00a0 I slow down a bit, pull away, dip and drown
\nbelow the waterline.\u00a0 I don’t miss the
\ndrugs, I fear the pain.\u00a0 This is the thin
\nline of oblivion.\u00a0 This is the careful
\nwhispering.\u00a0 Will you need them again
\ntonight?\u00a0 My lovers, my drugs?\u00a0 Will I wake up at 2am screaming in pain, the
\nelectric fire burning through my nerves, my face twitching, my eyes watering,
\nmy tongue bitten through and a mouthful of blood?\u00a0 Will the rush of the train hit me in the
\nmorning?\u00a0 The blast of air from the Metro
\nas it rolls into our station.\u00a0 There,
\nslow down.\u00a0 The wind tumbles out of the
\ntunnel, I am forced back, the fire hits, and I turn away, my hands to my face,
\nthe pain pushing me against the concrete
\nwall and, freeze.<\/p>\n
Spin around this empty body, this little boy in pain, this
\nterrible affliction.\u00a0 There it is
\nagain.\u00a0 The pink pill.\u00a0 The supplement.\u00a0 Take as needed
\nin addition to the usual cocktail.\u00a0 Side effects may include
\ndizziness.\u00a0 Mood change.
\nSide effects may include falling backward into water.<\/p>\n
Can’t you hear the I remember kissing.\u00a0 I The pain leaves me and the bottle sits there, taunting The pain comes back. Train in the distance. Little pink bastards. Here, we’ll pause.\u00a0 I That hand that used to hold mine is dead.\u00a0 I guess it’s a Until next time. Now let’s turn around and rise up.\u00a0 Away from that boy, above the station, above Sleep now, dear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,160],"class_list":["post-2510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2735,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions\/2735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthunder?\u00a0 You’d better run, you’d better
\ntake cover.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nremember biting into an apple, eating a cheeseburger.\u00a0 I remember
\nsmiling into the wind.\u00a0 I remember simple days.<\/p>\n
\nme.\u00a0 You cheap whore.\u00a0 Fifteen dollars, but those are friend
\nprices,
\nyes?\u00a0 To those masses suffering on the
\nstreets you go for $500.\u00a0 You cheating,
\nvicious creature.\u00a0 I would die without
\nyou.\u00a0 The pain would take me away.\u00a0 Dear god, I feel myself
\nsinking into the
\nmattress.\u00a0 Dear god, I can see this.\u00a0 I can see the end
\nthrough this bottle.\u00a0 Sunday best and memories of youth, the dance
\ninto a party, the world at a fair, a dead mother’s hand holding
\nmine.\u00a0 Blink, close those young eyes slowly, turn
\nyour young head, look up at her.\u00a0 Short
\nblack hair, dark eyes, pale skin.\u00a0 Burned
\nbeyond recognition.\u00a0 Consumed by
\nanger.\u00a0 Close those young eyes
\nslowly.\u00a0 Take a breath.\u00a0 Hands across a gravestone, bought
\ncheaply,
\nlast minute throwaway regrets.<\/p>\n
\nIt always comes back.\u00a0 But it’s
\nnot the nerves now.\u00a0 Will you take me
\naway.\u00a0 You dusty pink bastards.\u00a0 May cause dizziness.
\nWaste my day away.\u00a0 How many do I need to stop all this?\u00a0 How
\nmany of you will put me to bed?\u00a0 How many of you will let me sigh
\nand smile in
\nmy sleep?\u00a0 How many to never, again, wake
\nwith the pain?<\/p>\n
\nCarries on the air, the Big Dipper above, holding the dreams of all
\nHumanity.\u00a0 We’ll come to you.\u00a0 On my back, waiting to be
\npicked up, no
\nfriends back in the classroom, from sun to moon to stars to sun.
\nThe way a hand feels in mine.\u00a0 How to describe it?\u00a0 How to
\nput it into words.\u00a0 Raise your eyes, boy, look into hers.
\nNow, no longer mother.\u00a0 Blue eyes and light brown hair, waiting
\nlips
\nand sharp nose.\u00a0 Move closer and remember
\neverything, remember the happy time, play and fight.\u00a0 Two dreamers
\nrolling in bed and the sheets
\nnever come between us.\u00a0 Nothing will come
\nbetween us.\u00a0 Not until we do.\u00a0 This pain that I built.<\/p>\n
\nThere you are again.\u00a0 How many of
\nyou will erase that space between us?
\nThe passage of time.\u00a0 Do not take
\nwith alcohol.<\/p>\n
\nwant you to look at me through the vodka as I pour it into the
\nglass.\u00a0 We’ll make it a dramatic scene.\u00a0 We’ll put it in the
\nmovie.\u00a0 9pm.
\nVodka.\u00a0 Get off them.\u00a0 Stop taking them.\u00a0 The pain fades
\nbut my head moves to the left
\nside and I prepare for it to return.\u00a0 Any
\nminute now.\u00a0 It starts with a gentle
\ntingle around the ear, it moves to my upper lip on the right side, it
\ntears
\nthrough my cheek, up along my nose, my eye flinches then closes, a
\npunch in the
\nface makes me lean back and removes me from the world.\u00a0 Fire takes
\nhold of me and I move upwards,
\nwatching my body fall away from me, as white-hot terror takes
\nhold.\u00a0 Then it fades and I return.\u00a0 First sound, then sight,
\nthen I breathe
\nagain.\u00a0 Less then a second, before the
\nnext pulse.\u00a0 Repeat.\u00a0 Return.
\nPulse.\u00a0 Then it holds, and I set
\nmy jaw, press my neck against my shoulder, clinch my face, peel back my
\nlips,
\nhold my breath, wait for it to pass.\u00a0 It
\nmay be a minute, an hour, three weeks, three months.\u00a0 It passes
\nand my body relaxes, slowly,
\ndecompresses, falls back into itself, leaving only a headache, a dry
\nhollowness.\u00a0 The pink pills help bring me
\ndown from those episodes. Wake when needed.
\nThe neck is first, cracking, snapping, returning to normal.
\nSlowly, over a few days, the shoulders
\nfall.\u00a0 Then I start to catch my breath
\nand smile again.\u00a0 Then the headaches
\nstop.\u00a0 Then life begins and the speed,
\nrunning, power.\u00a0 Freedom.\u00a0 A hand on the bottle.
\n1600mg.<\/p>\n
\nskeleton now.\u00a0 How we laughed, then.\u00a0 How we fought
\nthen.\u00a0 A mother’s hand,\u00a0 I can feel that dead flesh pressed
\nagainst my
\nhand right now.\u00a0 You little pink
\nbastards.\u00a0 You’re taking me inside,
\nagain.\u00a0 You’re taking me away again.\u00a0 I can’t stop it.
\nI can’t stop this mother’s corpse.\u00a0 I can’t stop that lover’s
\nkiss.\u00a0 I can’t stop that broken bone.\u00a0 I can’t stop that
\npunch to the jaw.\u00a0 I can’t stop those laughs and tears and
\nscreams.\u00a0 All at once.\u00a0 Again and again until…I wake
\nup.\u00a0 Sucking air through my mouth.\u00a0 Morning sun.
\nNo more of you.\u00a0 No more.<\/p>\n
\nUntil the fire builds again.
\nUntil I spin, turn, freeze.<\/p>\n
\na Maryland
\nsuburb, into the air, the jetliner view, the nameless suburban layout, the
\nsquare patches, the white clouds, the heavy eyes, the roar of the engine.<\/p>\n