dead end

The first time I injected anything into my veins, I was 20 years old.In the summertime, I’d get a rash because my thighs would rub together. I’d smother myself in baby oil, hoping to get a tan line around my mint shorts. Or my weathered swimsuit. I’d lay on the lawn chair in the backyard until the cicadas started chirping and the neighbor would fire up the weed whacker over the sound of the evening news. West Chester was the type of place where you could ride your bike to the end of thestreet to poke a stick at a dead raccoon. It’s face slowly decomposing with the passing of the last humid days of summer. I’d pull up my comforter to sleep curled up on top of the air conditioning vent, remaining completely oblivious to the fact that in a few years I will no longer have a place to call home.In the long nights, kids who “know better” pass joints of weed they got from a wooden box hidden in their dad’s underwear drawer. A wedding will be the first place you will get a sip of whiskey. My face turns red when a drunk neighbor comments on my growing boobs. “Get me a drink” he says. Coasters are made of cork. Thunderstorms fill the gutters with so much water, we wade up to our ankles and prey we don’t get sucked down.“I’m going to have you look away” he says as he pushes the very dull syringe into my arm. It leaves a mark like the 4th of July. My arm is red, white and blue now. Like a mosquito had put a thing in me, instead of taking liquid out. I cried that night, that first time I didn’t get high. Not because lines were crossed but because I declared after five vodka cranberries that he didn’t really love me. This was true. I cried a river of tears to a stranger in the bathroom who helped fix my eyeliner. And I still have to give him a ride home, I tell her. She nods her disapproval.It wasn’t the morphine sulphate, it was the feelings I had for you that gave me pins and needles. I wanted to wake up in your dirty sheets to watch you smoke the first cigarette of the day.