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I was on fentanyl the night my mom had her heart attack.
Smoking cigarettes with her on the back porch
while she worried that her chest felt funny.
And I was smoking a cigarette when I called my sister outside of the hospital
after a doctor had told me to “wait outside”
after I asked
if my mother was going to survive.
And I texted my dealer the next morning
asking him if he could throw a little extra my way
because my mom had just almost died
and I needed to almost kill myself to feel better.
And my grandma was home the night I let that stranger shoot me up.
And he told me “if you start to feel like you can’t breathe,
just cough.”
And I was on meth the Christmas that I had COVID
the same way I was when I graduated
alone in a room
quarantined
clutching my pipe
and surrounded by the ghosts of my empty accomplishments.
And I was on meth the morning that my grandmother died.
And I was on meth a week later when my dog died, too.
And I didn’t cry that morning, but my dealer did,
when I told him what I had been through.
Today I’ve been clean for 457 days
and I miss getting high.
But I do have to admit
I missed being able to cry.