"Addiction Rode Shotgun"

"Addiction Rode Shotgun"

Yesterday I sat, quietly, lonely on the porch,
eyes fixated on the deterioration of my childhood habitat.
The houses were still and lifeless, and as I looked
around, figments of memory shot through my mind, careless
and chaotic. I watched the neighbors stumbling through
their daily chores, their faces long and distorted, and
wondered about the laughing children I had once chased
fireflies with. Even the grass grew in grotesque, uneven
patterns and the wind's chill heaved doubt and sorrow
onto my shoulders with the delicacy of a mother's touch.
And as I sat there on that lonely second step, I wondered
how love existed in the world, and why with not a stone
left unturned, I never could seem to find it.

I forced my mind to leave the damp, hollowness of that
front porch view and found myself walking in another time,
another place. Like old man Scrooge, I watched as images of
days long past skipped around me like a nightmare slideshow.
The old folks sat in booths and on benches and kids wandered
though a maze of cliques and friendships, mutinies and
betrayals, all while I watched from somewhere in the distance.
Then I could see the heroin beckoning me from the black
depths of the farthest corner, and I moved in some uncertain
way toward her until I could feel the warmth of her lips on
my cheek. Then she dissolved away into the same dark shadows
with a smile that seemed to scream from every orifice of my
being: "the first one's for free."

The dream moved, breakneck through time, and I having since
been rehabilitated, forgot about the heroin, yet the fine
line remains between defeat and dormancy. The little white
doctors in little white lab coats that swam in the syrup of
my subconscious were convinced that I was far too unstable to
reenter society on my own, and it was their recommendation
that I move in with my father, whom I had never met. There I
was educated and nursed back to health until the pressure of
the outside world shattered the foundation beneath me and I
set out to make it alone. I saw flashes of freedom and dim
light shining through the permeable layers of my skin and I
smiled for the briefest of moments before the heroin was once
again hovering around me.

Today, I stood on that second step staring out at those
lifeless people and Addiction rode shotgun in my car all the
way to the clinic. As I remember it, she was always there,
tumbling around in the front zipper pocket of my backpack,
carefully clinging to the inside walls of a sandwich bag.
For days I sat in the parking lot contemplating the outcome,
but the funny thing about Addiction is, no matter how many
times you walk away, you have to want to leave her. The people
buzzed around me like red taillights on a high-speed video,
but I couldn't bring myself to go inside. So Addiction rode shotgun
back to my father's house, and he stood alone at the
mailbox as we pulled up. I left the car running and walked
them both to the door, kicking over a stone in the driveway.