in matters of recovery, as with revolution, you either triumph or you die.

they say ignorance is bliss, and I had no idea until he plopped a wet lump of beige-colored clay into my hands. 

"mix," he instructed. 

I looked at the lump. I looked at him. at the lump. at him. 

"I beg your pardon?"  

sighing deeply and with a slight roll of those vivid eyes, he sat down and pulled me into his lap with him. his arms reached around to rip a small piece off the mass, and he worked it between his fingers, all the while staring pointedly at me. 

it was stubborn at first, staunchly maintaining its rigidity, but his hands were relentless.  I watched his knuckles turn white with effort, his veins slithered smoothly across trained muscles, and sure enough, the clay began to give.  the heat from his skin took the chill off the topmost layer and those determined fingers pushed it further in with steady, measured kneading.  before long, the piece had been heated through and ended its struggle. he persisted. not satisfied with just having warmed it, he continued until gave in to him completely, the toughness of the raw material reduced to... well, putty. it flowed silkenly under his touch, welcoming him so blatantly I could see the lines of his fingerprints embossed on the surface. 

I don't often feel kinship with inanimate objects, but somehow I'm sure I knew exactly what that clay was going through.  

...all the way up to when he gave it to me and wrapped my hands around it by covering them with his. now the damn clay was on its own, because I hadn't the slightest. 

"mix," he said again. 

under the penetrating eye of the art nazi, I timidly tried to recreate his movements, glancing up at him occasionally to verify that I wasn't making some drastic blunder that would cause the fabric of time to unravel and the world as we know it to cease existing. 

I looked at the clay. I looked at him. I looked at my hands, my shoes, my insecurity, I looked up and away. 

he never took his eyes off me. 

I had likened him to the calm before a storm in the beginning.  now the comparison suspended itself thickly in the air around us, saturated it like the humidity before Florida rain.  his eyes today were crystal clear, the waves shushed and stilled, their constant bombarding on my skin replaced  by the weight of his intent. 

I'd spent much of my life greedily  keeping myself from other people, and when I met her, Imogene, Imogene, my beginning, my end, I all but threw the gates open, practically kicked the fuckers down, and let the parts of me that had been carefully saved and preserved flood her. it swept her away. a twinge of guilt licked at my insides, maybe she drowned in it.  well she was gone now and it was gone now, the reserves emptied, and I was exhausted from expelling all that energy on such a tiny little thing.  she was little, too. frail might not be the word I'm looking for but it's the word I'm going to use.  sitting in his lap at that exact moment, the lump of clay cooling in my immobile, incompetent hands, something akin to all the secrets I'd been keeping snaked out towards him. it creeped past the gates that once held it as they drooped lamely from broken hinges.  right before it reached his sternum, he abruptly stood, and I went flying with all the grace of a politician's smear campaign. 

but once I steadied myself, I mustered the courage to look

back into that uncharacteristically calm ocean, and my secrets, at his level, stared him down too. 

he never took his eyes off me. 

they say you can feel a good strong storm brewing in your bones, but my bones felt like mush. instead the empty rooms of my recovering heart, where Imogene used to hide, echoed with electricity that rumbled in clouds I couldn't see.   the walls shook, reminding me needlessly that, pending background check and security deposit, we were open for another tenant. it had taken awhile, the last one had left the place in shambles, but it cleaned up real nice. 

the storm was coming.  I could almost smell it. 

a few blocks away, some two stories and six feet below us, a cheap pine box lay buried, stamped with numbers I couldn't recall. 

the ways i wanted her were innumerable.

the depths to which i felt her were unspeakable.

the things i wanted from her... indescribable.

because really, how do you say it?  how do you tell someone you love them so much you could die?  there aren't even words for the ways i loved her.  i could hardly bring myself to exhale because i wanted to do was continuously, fluently breathe her in.  it was like she didn't have enough skin to touch, like i couldn't kiss hard enough.  like i couldn't root myself as deep as deep as deep as i wanted to go.  i wanted to crawl into her bones and replace her marrow so every time her blood pumped it would be because of me.  i wasn't obsessed, i was consumed, and i wanted to consume her in turn.

now that she's gone... i'm starving.

and i'm tired, i'm so tired.  i can't rest without her soft breathing on my throat, i can't sleep without the warmth of her fragile body against mine.  the shallow rise and fall of her perfect chest, with its glassine surface and pillows of pure fucking freedom that waited for me, called to me, day in and day out, night after night after perfect, memorable night. 

i shouldn't be surprised that she's gone, because everything she did was like a memory waiting to happen.

every way she moved captured everyone around her, a flutter of angel wings waiting to be captured themselves.

captured by imaginations, by desires, by every wanting, wakeful eye that had the pleasure of misfortune of seeing them.

imogene was the kind of beautiful that broke your heart, the kind of beautiful that made you wish you were someone else.  someone better, someone stronger, someone more like she deserved.  but imogene, my imogene, my beginning, my end, she wasn't one to be predicted.  she deserved palaces.  her sweet angel kisses and her sweet angel sighs could tip the heads of kings, could have emperors craning their necks to hear her words.  instead she spoke to the degenerates, to the dregs of society, to me.

she had a smile like sunshine.  it broke through the clouds of whoever the fuck you thought you were and it warmed the coal your insides had become.  it coaxed and nurtured life from the impossible recesses of the jaded.  it melted the cold of all the years you knew before her and promised future, promised life.

obviously, it was a fucking liar.

because she's gone, and i'm alone, and without her...

i'm nothing.

NARCAN

I knew somewhere in the recesses of my mind that those were sirens.

But to me, each screeching wail was like a shot to my chest, the aching hollow thing my knees were drawn up tight into.  the delicate skin grew raw from heaving against an immobile wall of denim for God knows how long.

A young, baby-faced cop had knelt in front of me, stammering his laundry list of questions.  He was wet behind the ears and his green was showing, and my unresponsiveness only sent him further into awkward shyness but manners had escaped me at that particular moment. 

I was busy watching blue gloved hands roam her stretched out body, extend her arms, poke and prod that skin, that luscious silk that used to set me on fire. 

I wanted to sweep them aside and lay on top of her, I wanted to protect her fragile pride and maintain the strict physical barrier that she broke only for me.  The daggers from my eyes dulled significantly from having to break through a thick, blank stare.

"THAT'S MINE!" my thoughts screamed savagely.  "THAT'S MINE, IT'S MINE, THAT'S FUCKING MINE!"

Instead I caught my tongue between my teeth and bit down until I tasted a flood of rusty brine.

The calloused brute cupped her chin and tilted her face away from him, towards me.  She still looked absolutely perfect.  But when the tip of his stupid fumbling finger grazed the outside of her beestung mouth a squawk fled my throat and flapped away without my permission.

"She doesn't like to be touched!"  I was begging him, more than anything.

He looked up at me briefly and continued his inspection.

Her skin was like pallid rose petals and I swear I could see the clumsy fingerprints he left, dirty little bruises as proof of his invasion.  The more he handled her the more she started to look like bruised, old fruit.

I could see it in his eyes, that look I had met daily in my prison by the lake.  He raised one cynical brow, a little jerking motion upwards that said, "Just another overdose."

My inner voice screamed again, emphasizing each syllable like an impetuous child.

"SHE'S NOT A DRUGGIE, YOU SIMPLE FUCK!" I berated him.  "SHE'S THE DRUG, SHE'S THE DRUG!"

Somewhere in my hysterics, they had all filed out and I've been alone ever since.  However long that's been. 

With Imogene gone, really truly gone, I lived my life in stop motion.  In strobe light.  Every action a pose for a tragic, poignant still.

Oh...

The conditioning I had put myself through in the months leading up to now all fell to the wayside.  I slid closer and closer to the shadow of my old self, and I eventually began to slip through the cracks of it.

I wanted to slip through the cracks of the world to escape the cracks in my heart.

I wanted her back. 

Imogene, Imogene, my beginning, my end.

For some strange reason, I thought about the little side table we'd hover over together, cross-legged and smiling.  We drank and laughed as we let sobriety and the night and our clothes fall away.

I remembered how we used to lay on our backs, eyes closed tight and clinging to each other to combat the spinning of the room and whisper our promises again and again.  Now that I think of it, I don't really seem to recall her promising much of anything. 

But me... I promised the world. Several worlds, in fact.

I promised my flesh and bones, brittle though they were.  I promised my blood, the toxic sludge.

I promised to follow her from this life to the next and the next and the one after that.  I promised to find her again, in every form we might exist.  In every life. 

I'm pretty sure she at least promised to be found.

But now that she's gone all I find is that I'm a flip book of devastation.  Frame by frame by page by still of sad, sloppy heartbreak.

Me staring vacantly into the mirror.

Snap. (Flip.)

Me standing lonely at the foot of our bed.

Snap.  (Flip.)

Me with a belt between my teeth.

Snap.  (Flip.)

Me, unconscious with my chin to my chest.

Snap.  (Flip.)

It drives me crazy that I can't even say I miss her.  Because really, when half your limbs are ripped from your body, you don't fucking MISS them.  You grieve them, you mourn them.  You curse the motherfucker who took them from you and you loathe the sorry motherfucker you've become.  Fucking worthless.

Sometimes I sit in silence so long my heartbeat is deafening.

Sometimes I scream at nothing so long I forget I'm doing it.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I wish I had fed us both to that vulture after all.

As soon as I can gather enough breath to hold it, I'm going to go find her.

My beginning, my end.

My want, my wish, my world, my everything, MINE.

speechless.

something was wrong. 

i didn't know what, I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was amiss. 

I tried and failed to force my eyes open, sleep stuck in the corners and held the lids down. I unlocked the death grip my arms had on each other and attempted a stretch. the awkward movement was blocked by something, and a sheet of silk fell across my flushed, drool crusted face. 

Imogene. 

my eyes snapped to attention, the hardened glaze tearing the delicate skin and uprooting lashes, and I fought to blink back the moisture while I searched her face. 

and then the world ended. 

my world, your world, any world, it was over. 

her typically pale skin had a light bluish cast, her bee stung lips lacked their usual flush. her lashes, sooty feathers, reached impossibly far down her chilled stone cheeks. 

oh my god. 

oh my god oh my god oh my god. 

Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end. 

my want my wish my world. 

my everything. 

mine. 

I couldn't even weep. 

I wrapped my arms back around her and nestled my head in the crook of her neck. I sucked gulps of air in frantically, hopingprayingbegging for that lavender burn.

nothing. 

I had spent a long time hating the way she tempted me. I spent years upon years wanting something that was purposely out of my reach. I dreamt of her, I woke for her, I sustained myself on nothing but her scent and her taste for weeks at a time.  I flip flopped between love and hate, need and want, addicted and desperate to escape. 

but I always went back.  probably because she was always there. 

I built my existence on her. every fleeting thought hinged on her.  she was the questions I asked myself, and she was the answer to all of them. she was the problem and the solution.

she was like nothing I'd ever seen before. 

now that my arms circled her unresponsive waist, the lavender rush nowhere to be found, tears slipped from the eyes I no longer had a need for. 

drip, drip, drip. 

she used to be my morphine. 

drip, drip, drip. 

she used to be my muse. 

the beautiful, articulate ribbons of hot pink scars roping around my extremities... that art was for her. 

I pulled her closer thinking maybe just maybe I could pull her in.

my tears slipped down my face and into her hair, matting it messily on the wax paper her skin had become. 

Imogene, my imogene, my beginning. 

my end. 

my heart broke. 

it's called a "bump"

I don’t even want her anymore. 

Honest.

I don’t even know who I am anymore…

…honest.

I got out of Satan’s Care Facility and true to form, stuck with none of the love-sick promises I had savagely pledge whilst trapped in its unfeeling walls.  I even went so far as to fashion some sort of life for myself.  At first I would wander my apartment complex, slowly and methodically, not unlike how I imagined a ghost might.  I would trudge step after step, in and out of the moonlight, clutching at my losses and sighing all theatrical-like. 

Needless to say, that got real fuckin’ old, real fuckin’ fast.

Eventually I began testing my barriers, timidly approaching the edge of my comfort zone like a middle schooler at the Sadie Hawkins.  I toed the line here and there, pleased with myself for even being able to look at it without throwing up.  I’m proud to say that my radius, as it stands, goes as far as 6.2 miles out from my point of origin.

But the day came, as it always must, when disaster struck yet again.

I remember climbing the stairs to my efficiency, with none too much zest, flipping the keys onto the palm of my hand, then the back.  Then the palm of my hand, then the back.  My foot hardly hit the top stair when a sledgehammer hit me in the face.

Lavender.

And there she was.

Curled up in the corner, sleeping peacefully in the glow of the exit light, and looking too fucking beautiful for anybody’s good, there was my Imogene.

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end.

Just laying eyes on her, being almost in her presence, I could feel the burn and swell of her scent in the back of my throat.  The heady rush of that sickly floral sweet spread through my skin and warmed every cell, throwing even my molecular structure into a riotous uproar. 

Everything that I had worked so hard to forget came springing back up, and violently.  Her hair fell over her jawline from the way her head was tilted, and I knew, I knew, I justFUCKINGknew that if I reached out and tucked it behind her ear it would feel like strands of satin, that her skin would feel like silk, and that she would adjust herself even in her sleep to tilt her face towards me and part her lips and sigh that little angel sigh of hers. 

And I didn’t even have to do all that to know if I put my mouth on hers what she’d taste like.  Which would be like lust and honey and promise and newports and want and life and oh…

Nobody could ever tell me I didn’t love that girl enough.  Nobody could ever say I didn’t want her enough.

In the time I spent standing there looking at her, watching her chest rise and fall with each measured, sleeping breath, all the emptiness I’d been running from caught up with me.  My heart broke for every single day I had spent without worshipping her.  My veins itched from every ounce of blood they pumped that wasn’t for her.  My mouth watered.

Imogene is the kind of beautiful that makes it impossible to stand your ground.  The kind of beautiful that rips the foundation out from everything you are and reduces you to a smoldering, stuttering, simpering mess.  The way she raises an eyebrow, a certain way she licks the corner of her mouth, little things that are more than enough to make you forget everything you ever knew before you saw her do them.  And happily, at that.

Ba-bump… ba-bump… ba-bump… ba… bump…

My want, my wish, my world.

My beginning.

My end. 

My Imogene.

And then I guess it happened.

After weeks or months or however long of treading water without taking a breath, I inhaled that lavender and dropped to my knees to put my head in her lap.

Ba-bump… ba-bump… ba-bump… ba… (nothing)

I guess I wasn’t so honest, surprise surprise.  I do know who I am.  I’m hers, like I’ve always been.

 hey, "FUCK LOVE", i want my $50 back.

They say the addict’s brains are  different than everybody else’s.

They say that once a brain tastes addiction, it is forever changed.

That’s the kind of bullshit junkies feed each other so they don’t feel so bad about being losers.  Because really, when does the brain taste any sort of experience that doesn’t leave it just a little bit different?

When I met Imogene, I was another person entirely…

I had a family.  I had a job.  I had a house and a life and a political stance, the whole shebang.  But I’ve tasted now… I’ve tasted love.  And not the kind of love you blind morons think you have, staging the same scenes with each other at Applebee’s, at Friday’s, in your stupidly decorated kitchens.  Over your poorly cooked meals.  Tucked into your lackluster beds.  No, you don’t know love.  It’s not until you’ve sold your heart and soul down the river, not until you’ve given every material and immaterial thing that was or was not yours to give, that you’ll know what I know.  People like you with your boundaries and your limits, people like you with your lines you won’t cross and depths you won’t sink to, people like you live their whole lives really believing that love like ours is made up and strictly in the movies.  Well, tough beat motherfucker because while you were busy placating yourselves with 2/$20 deals at Ruby Tuesday’s and movies that were made for the RottenTomatoes list, I went and had real love.

 Anybody who says love is patient or kind clearly doesn’t know diddlysquat.  Real love does not wait to be together and real love does not allow for past relationships or present circumstances or life to stand in the way of being completely and totally whole. Even if it means being what some might consider “unkind”.  That old saying, “Love is never jealous” is bullshit because real love will not tolerate being silent while someone takes up any part of its rightful attention and affection, real love does not play second fiddle and will not stand for sharing any sort of limelight from its intended. 

Oh no, real love is an animal. A beast.  An insipid soul-stealing harpy who would rather suck the marrow out of your bones and slit her wrists with the jagged broken edge than share you with anything or anybody.  And because she has your soul (the cruel bitch),  she is thoroughly and eternally irresistible. 

Love isn’t about sharing and helping each other grow, in fostering our individual natures.  Love is about becoming the same person, love is about tearing this weak prickling skin off and melting down into one beautiful shot.  Love is about giving everything you have over to someone else so wholly it was always theirs to begin with. 

Love isn’t about forgiving, it’s forgetting.

Love isn’t about the heart, it’s about the mind.  It’s a balanced rush of µd3 receptors flooding the whole damn thing.

Love is what put me here.  Love is what brought me to where I am today.  Love is what almost killed me.  But love is also what keeps this body going, heals these broken parts. 

And love, fickle bitch, is going to have a lot of fucking questions to answer when I get out of this shithole.

old habits die hard.

Needless to say, I am somewhat a creature of habit.

I got in the habit of Imogene.  I grew accustomed to her.  I had fastened her to my vital organs, bound her to each one of my thoughts.  And then she was gone.

So I got in the habit of being consciously devoid of her.  I grew accustomed to really feeling that lack of her, to really giving it life. I let the emptiness she left become its own monster.

When I was delivered unfortunately at redemption’s door, I got in the habit of feeling sorry for myself.  I grew accustomed to everyone tip-toeing through my door, afraid to upset the feeble, shaking frame of bones and bruises held together with misery.  Voices were rarely louder than a whisper.  If ever I were touched (which was unusual and infrequent) it was barely more than a brush, a graze. 

Change came bustling into my room today wearing Minnie Mouse scrubs and a ponytail.  And I don’t mean bustling so much as charging, with all the whispering tip-toe of a fucking freight train.

Her name was Dot.  Literally. 

Not Dottie, not Dorothy.  Dot.

Everything she did made a horrible, nerve-wracking noise.  When she washed her hands she turned the faucet to full tilt, letting the water crash like a roomful of fine china. She seemed to rip the paper towels as savagely as she possibly could.  And the rickety folding chair she lugged across the room to be right next to me… I thought I was going into grand mal seizure.  A short 30 seconds of her presence had managed to foster an annoyance akin to anger reminiscent of hatred.  It bubbled hotly under my skin, and all I could do was sit there and project it.  A shabby, shrunken skeleton propped up on too many pillows, scowling. I must’ve looked like a dollar store Halloween decoration.  On clearance.  The day before Easter.

Clearly Dot had the same idea because she laughed as she looked at me, a full-bodied sound that bounced off the tile floors and bare walls.  Imogene had a tinkling bell for a laugh, a gentle breathy sigh.  I missed it.  But Dot laughed with her diaphragm, snapping surgical gloves on with all the gusto of the mad scientist in a B-grade movie.  It only made me scowl harder. 

She grabbed my arm from my lap and extended it towards her while reciting the standard explanation of blood draw.  It shocked me to be handled, her grip was more than I’d felt in forever.  After tying the tourniquet too tight, she let one hand circle my wrist firmly while the other roamed my skin with experience and confidence.

“Actually,” I spat nastily, since my glare was having no effect, “I really prefer the latex-free equipment.”

She never removed the intent of her focus from scanning my arm. “You’re actually not allergic to latex.” Nonetheless, her hand swiftly rose to her mouth and she caught the tip of the index between her teeth, freeing herself from the Glove of Great Offense.  She kept searching until she found what she sought.

Now that her bare skin was on mine, the contact stirred me.  It reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on, and the simple feeling of warm and living brought a rush of tears to my eyes.  Almost like fire, almost like something I had felt before but couldn’t specifically recall…

Dot was already drawing at this point, two deft hands unknowingly encouraged more tears and her face peered quizzically at mine.  Very plain, I made a point of noting.  She seemed to be taking mental notes on me too while she filled the little red-topped blue-topped green-topped tubes.

“Why are you crying!” She exclaimed.  “God, with all the shit listed on your chart this should be nothing for you.”

There’s a particular way people ask “why are you crying” that’s less an inquiry as to the origin of tears and more “stop fucking crying”.  Dot asked in exactly that particular way.

“Well it hurts!” I sniffed like a wounded animal and turned my head with all the righteous indignation of a three year old. The way the fresh, red blood hit the culture liquid ballooned and curled, a cool smoky swirl of crimson clouding the muted yellow, looked just like adding cream to coffee, but on a different color scheme.

“Like I said.” She tape-and-gauzed me brusquely and I thanked the powers that be she was on the last step of her process.  “I’ve seen your chart.  You’ve clearly worked pretty hard to destroy your body, I would’ve thought you were used to pain.”

Who says that? My stone scowl crumbled to let my mouth gape open. I’m sure I looked like some sort of dying, flabbergasted fish.  “Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner leaves something to be desired?”

She laughed loudly again and let my barb sail over her shoulder, not even flinching from the razor sharp edge that I will have you know very nearly could have nicked her carotid artery and left her discourteous, insensitive ass bleeding to death at the foot of my bed.  Bemused and unaffected, she asked, “Has anyone ever told you that addiction is stupid and pathetic?”

After a quick glance into my empty bag of tricks and realizing I wore no sleeves in which to hide some, I knew I was out of nasty retorts.

“Look, you obviously had a death wish of some sort,” Little Miss Pleasant-pants continued as she finished gathering her supplies, “If I were her, I would’ve left you there. Jussayin’.”

My hackles were up as she tread dangerously close to the sacred ground that held Imogene’s shrine.  “If you were who?” I carefully prompted her to elaborate.

She was almost out the door at this point but she stopped and turned.  Her nondescript eyes narrowed, squinted at my moronic façade as though she couldn’t tell if I were serious or not. “The girl who brought you in to be treated,” she spoke to me like I was the three year old I behaved as.

“You know,” she said. “Imogene.”  She spun back around and disappeared into the busy world outside my room, leaving the static air inside it thick with pure shock.  I watched her ponytail swing wildly behind her as she bustled away from the chaos and destruction that lay around me in her wake.

And she was gone.

Dot.

What.

The.

FUCK.

drugs are too obvious... and so are you. 

In the time that I’ve been here, where ever “here” might be, I’ve slowly started coming back from the dead. All the work I had put into destroying myself is being reversed. My ribs looked less like the skeletal bars on either side of my bed, “to keep the patient from falling out” I was told.  They were more prison bars to me.  The hollows in my cheeks began to fill out, my eyes became less and less sunken everyday.  I had forgotten what I looked like with blood in my face.

I don’t even recognize myself anymore.

Imogene used to be my drug of choice, my fix, my score, my Betty, my skag. My beginning.  My end. My morphine drip.  Now they’re pushing actual morphine into me on the constant.  It blandly acts as a substitute, shushing my aching need for her, rolling over my desire and love like a thick, heavy fog.  I felt like a fucking traitor. They were slowly and systematically removing all the physical manifestations of my complete and utter heartbreak, and I was powerless to stop it. I hate knowing that soon, she’ll be gone completely. Every single trace of her eradicated. No matter how hard I try, no matter how desperate I am to protect her, they manage to take her from me bit by beautiful bit. 

I missed her more than anything.  She even stopped crawling through my skin, ceased scraping my bones.  I felt nothing.  I missed the scent of her on me. I missed the warmth of her eyes and the way my stomach leapt at the sight of her.  Imogene was so beautiful it was like she made everything exciting and magical.  Now that she’s gone, I find myself blindsided by the normalcy of life. I hate not having much to look forward to everyday.  I used to be so overcome with her, the need of her, the thought of her, thetouchthetastethesmell of her... I used to be so taken with her that I knew nothing else.  I was simply living and breathing Imogene and she was beautiful and I was beautiful and everything was just fucking beautiful. But now… now… now I had to feel everything I had forgotten about. I hate feeling everything to it’s fullest extent, undiluted, unfiltered by my obsession with her.  I hate having anything that's not her affect me.

If only she would just come back.  If I could see her, just see her one more time…  I know it’s gonna hurt like hell when she leaves again. But I gotta see her.  I have to.  I need to. Maybe to remind myself that she was real, that I had the loveliest thing in the world once.  And I had her, I really did. She followed my lead and mirrored my want; she was so forceful in loving me back, in needing me too, so ready to die by my word. And stupidly, for whatever stupid reason my stupid disintegrating brain invented, I left.  I started this tragic chain of events by taking the first step, and by taking that step right out the door.  I’ve never felt power of control like that in my life and I abused the hell out of it.  Because now… I don’t have her.  Now I have nothing.

I want to turn all the regret I harbor in my heart into a stone cold killer. I want to dispatch it through my body like an assassin.  I want to let it kill off my blood cells by the gazillions and snipe my organs out one by one, pick them off two by two, until there’s nothing left of me but a few gnawed bones and really, really great hair.

All I can think about is laying eyes on her again.  At the rate they’re going not only will I get out of here someday, and but I'll be as strong as an ox, too.  Restored to factory settings if you will, smacking of vitality and functionality.  Of "wholeness".  Of "wellness".  And all for not.  With a so much time spent awake and immobile, Imogene-free, I’ve nothing to do but think.  And what I think is I’m going to use all of the ridiculous goddamn good health they’re forcing on me to find this “Good Samaritan” and throttle the life out of him.  I’m going to hunt him down like the dog that he is for interrupting my plans to rot away.  For relegating me to a long, full life without the only thing I could live for.  And then I’m going to find that happy place in the dirt again and settle back in, continue on nothing but the want of her.  And that’ll be “all she wrote”. I swore I would die without her, and yet here I am, all the fuck alone and… eating Jell-O.

No, no, I have a plan.  I have every intention of keeping my promise, so when the vulture comes in and rasps “Who is Imogene” I clamp my lips shut and look out the window.  I’ve never felt so fiercely protective of anything.  Even hearing her name roll off the withered tongue of some ignorant wench makes me violent and vicious and thirsty for blood.  But I guarded her diligently, not a word betraying Imogene’s beauty by escaping my mouth and attempting the impossible task of doing her justice.  “WHO…” the acid-and-gravel persists, “is Imogene.” Everything a statement, nothing a question.  I don’t know if it’s because Bitchface thinks she already knows the answer or if she doesn’t really care what that may be or if she’s just hoping the mention of her will draw my concealed darling out in the open to be preyed upon.  But I’ll be damned before I let some scrounging hag damage and disrespect what is obviously utter perfection, or worse, greedily snatch her up and fly away with her forever .  Imogene never crawled through my skin anymore because I had hid her so deep in this diseased, malfunctioning heart.  Anything that would alert the people around me to her mere existence was locked up and away from prying words, from probing eyes, .  From the vulture's little minions.  From thieves.  From those that mean her harm.  It's like I'm driven to keep her safe, to protect her.  I'm keeping her all to my slowly mending self, and hopefully there will be something left of her when I finally climb back down into whatever ditch or gutter I was fished out of.

God almighty I missed her. She’s consumed my thoughts.  She hungrily swallowed every last ounce of love I had and moved on to devour my spirit. Now that she’s left me with nothing but empty, I want her to devour my body as well.

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning.  My end.

I’m counting down the days until I can feed myself to my secrets.

leeches were once considered an effective form of treatment for most maladies.

A tall, gaunt woman with an unforgiving air and an unforgivable nose came shuffling into my room today. She was harsh and frightening, an unspoken threat.  Like a whirlwind she whipped about, returning the room to it’s pristine move-in condition.  The bear was tucked away into a dresser drawer, vases and vases of bloomed flowers with handwritten sentiments were pitched, notes and glass and posies and all, every sign of life removed and distilled until there was nothing left but electrical plugs and white.  She opened the blinds too far and the starkness of the room jarred my senses, shocking me into high alert.  The remnants of Imogene that lazed about in my skin prickled under my dressings.

She moved too quickly, causing my eyelids and heart to flutter with nerves.  Every step she took had a horrible scrape-and-thud to it.  Already of a more than respectable height, I suppose she didn’t need the help of an extra inch or two but these beige-colored, government-issue heels were of no help of any kind to anybody.  Maybe orthopedic, but I didn’t look that close.  If I did I’m sure I would’ve found careful, exact stitching: “Property of One Special Agent Dana Scully”.  They were the type of very practical professional female shoe that was built to deliver a good, menacing “clack” but she moved too quickly and awkwardly, she sort of dragged her foot in a fashion that made some horrible scraping noise instead, and a thud with the stabilizing of her step. She finally stilled for a moment, veiny, claw-like hands grasped together at her chest as she rotated, cold shrew’s eyes making sure her work was to her own satisfaction.  Finally she took the edge of Imogene’s rickety folding chair and drew it over the floor producing an awful screech and squeal, all the way from the wall to my bedside.  She perched lightly and crossed her legs at the ankles and to the right, keeping the knobs of her knees pressed together like they had a nickel between them.  She rested her hands on the heavily starched oxford cloth of her sensibly long skirt and sort of just cocked her head at me.  Like an inquisitive bird. 

Imogene went from prickling to hissing, bucking wildly against that which contained her.

I looked back, equally curious.

“So. What brings you in.” It was a statement, not a question, and her voice sounded like acid and gravel.

“A good Samaritan.” I replied.

Her beady bird eyes narrowed behind a nose that crowed for attention.  “You’re quite ill,” she stated obviously.  “You very nearly succeeded in killing yourself.”

I know this woman.  I know everything about her. We meet people like this all our lives.  Despite her aviary characteristics, light and flighty and seemingly frail, she was no sparrow.  Her eyes were too fierce, too black, they darted all over my face and rarely blinked. Thin lips either set in disapproval or spilled the rigid articulation of such, her chin jutted out with a pride that becomes very great ignorance.  Her body may have been slight in it’s build but it was efficient, tense and teeming with anticipation. It looked too thin, but in reality it was just wildly lean. The way she sat on the edge of the chair, elbows bent and hands resting atop each other it was as though she were ready to take flight at any moment, ready to soar up and come screaming down at me, streamlined and practiced, to dive straight into my mouth and down my throat and burst through my body, cruel wings flapping and dripping with entrails and victory.

She was nothing but a vulture.

“I suppose you’re right,” I answered her, looking to the lake beyond.  There were no fish jumping, no ducks to name. It was like they knew a hunter was near.

She stiffened, nostrils flaring as if she could smell the death on me already.  “So you agree, you tried to kill yourself.” She statement/questioned me without really wanting an answer.  She all but licked her pencil-thin lips as her eyes bore into mine.  I could feel her scavenger’s senses sinking through what I thought was impenetrable gauze, sifting through what she saw as my remains, sniffing out the smell of death in me somewhere. 

I let my head loll to the side as I kept my focus on the lake, willing my fishy friends to the surface.

But she was relentless.  It seemed like hours of rhetorical questions that she for some reason expected answers to, and no matter what those answers were or what varying degrees of truth they contained she received them skeptically, with raised eyebrows and a menacing twitch in her jaw. Imogene’s memory went from angrily rebelling against my skin to quietly shrinking further into my blood vessels. Those eyes, piercing and attentive, searched my person for something claimed by death already. 

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. I wanted to throw myself between her and the looming, imminent danger, but there was nothing I could do.  I laid.  I looked. 

This withered old vulture droned on, encouraging me to “release my baggage” and “confront my demons”.  The acid in her voice chided me harshly for my weakness, my addiction, my obvious aching need for that girl. But the gravel… the gravel in her voice was like dry leaves over the pavement.  It whispered to every nook and cranny of myself, every sore, healing cell that I had once devoted to Imogene but now promised to save for her as I waited her return. That gravel from her voice floated gently, if not quite comfortingly, over the empty spaces Imogene had just fled, coaxing her to come out. 

Imogene, my Imogene, I’ll never let them have you.

Ravenous old carrion, she played both good cop and bad cop all at once, she threatened my will while tracking down every last hint of Imogene with a hawk’s accuracy and a bloodhound’s resolve.

Imogene, my Imogene, my want my wish my world my everything MINE.

After what seemed like forever, the yards of oxford and starch straightened out as she stood abruptly.  She towered over my bed, leaning ever so slightly and blocking my view of the lake.  I hadn’t seen fish or fowl during any of the several hours she mindfucked me anyway, so I finally dragged my eyes out of their fixed position and locked them onto hers.  Her neck never bent. She stared haughtily down that monstrous, intimidating nose, challenging me to break our mutual gaze.

“…ba-bump…”

Instantly, her predator’s stare dropped to my chest, her brow furrowing as her sight bore down on me.

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Suddenly and surprisingly, she relented. She practically smirked as she turned on her government-issue heel and shuffled out, pausing in the doorway just long enough to toss a cool “Tomorrow, then” over her thin shoulder.

And as she left as quickly as she'd come.

My chest heaved as I exhaled a breath I felt I’d held for hours.  A fish jumped in the lake outside. 

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. 

I slept soundly for quite some time, while memories of the most toxic, deadly thing I’d ever known rested safely in my failing heart, where I’d hid her.

I love putting on headphones and listening to all the saved voicemails and scraps of voice memos of her. Anything and everything I have with her tinkling, bell-like voice on it.

I love when I cover my ears with all that pleasant and it's like both teeny tiny speakers projectile vomit her angel noises until they clash at some point in the middle of my head. Injectible memories, but with volume control and a pause option and a beveled tip that never gets dull.

I love getting lost in the sound of her.

I love feeling like she's there but my eyes are closed.

I love remembering her.

I love how it always leads to dreaming about her, which at present, is the best I can hope for.

"Love, me"

When I woke today there was a plush, lavender-scented stuffed bear under my IV-heavy arm. And tied around its little bear wrist with a little pink ribbon was a note, "Love, me".

I love burying my face as deep into the polyester as I can get it, I love breathing in that floral hypnotic.

I love how hooked I have her, a barbed needle lodged in her skin just like she's stuck in mine.

I'm not sure what happened next, exactly per se. "Cardiac arrest", they call it. "Clinically dead", they call it.

When I came to again, the bear had been taken from my weak, sickly grasp just like she was. It stares at me sadly from a small bulk purchased dresser against the wall next to the bed. Just out of my reach. Just like her. I've abandoned the lake and its blissfully ignorant inhabitants in favor of my new bunk mate, its shining button eyes pathetically pleading with me to heed its only given instructions; "Love, me". I wish its furry little bear ears weren't deaf to me when I swore that Imogene is, in fact, the only thing I've ever loved. The only thing I ever will.

That sweet silly child's toy is the only tangible evidence I have of her existence, save the hot pink scars marching and healing all up and down my person, and they're disappearing. My heart's faint "ba-bump" slows and shushes just thinking about her, thrilled by the idea she had returned yet again, maybe even cooled my skin with her hand while I dreamt of her.

"Love, me"

Big sigh.

The very thing that rendered me too ill to sustain myself, while somehow managing to be the one thing that keeps this dilapidated body from giving out entirely.

"Love, me"

Oh I love you alright.

I love you to death.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

 Intravenous drugs can cause heart problems.

So, something interesting actually happened today.

My heart stopped.

“Cardiac arrest” they call it.  My heart stopped beating long enough for my blood to stop circulating long enough for my brain to stop working. “Clinically dead” they call it. For 57 seconds. 

What a failure.  I couldn’t even make it to a full minute.  I can’t do anything right.

One second I was naming the stupid ducks in the stupid lake and next thing I know, the familiar smell of lavender and… quite frankly, heaven, flooded my head. But instead of the rush I’m used to, it burned. Like the very first drag you ever took, some pilfered Newport100 that your older friends gave you. Cool, dry fingers untangled my hair from my eyelashes and when I finally forced the lids up, there she was. 

Imogene.

My Imogene. 

My… something… my what?

She was in a rickety folding chair, little knees pressed against the side of my bed and her sweet little hands on my face, cooling the skin just by touching it.  I stared at her for a second, blinking hot, blood-tinged tears away as fast as I could to keep her from getting too blurry.  But it was her.  She was there.  She was near me again, touching me again, lighting the room and setting fire to every sense I never knew I had. 

And then I guess it happened.

When I finally came to, she was gone.  Again.  I guess it was decided I wasn’t well enough for all that excitement and she must’ve been excused from the room.  I can’t really breathe so well on my own.  My heart beats weakly, sending the machine it’s hooked up to into hysterics every twenty minutes or so because it decides to stop and take a rest.  The only thing I find myself really doing on my own is blinking.  But no matter how many times I do I can’t blink away enough of the wet sticky drops to fix the sight of what’s in front of me.

And it's just a chair.

But it's an empty, rickety, folding chair.

Imogene, my Imogene, come back.

I’m sorry.

I try to look out the window at the lake but I can’t bring myself to do it.  I don’t want to see sunsets or birds or ripples or fish.  I want to see her.  I want my lungs to hurt from that goddamn motherfucking smell, not from the exhaustion of just… working.

Life is being pushed into me on the constant, air is forced into my body and bags and bags of life, of blood, and electrolytes and antibiotics and whatever, magic for all I know, drip-drip-dripping into my superior vena cava the way my wounds and slashes used to drip-drip-drip with her.  I can read the people around me.  They’re convinced I’ve got both feet in the grave and they’re just waiting for me to go ahead and lay down.  But Jesus God I haven’t felt this alive in a long time.  Since we were together.  Since she was mine. 

She was here. 

She smoothed my hair back from my forehead and she wept for me.  I felt it. I saw it. Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end.  I love you so very much, from every corner and empty room of my heart that’s waiting to be filled with you.  With every weak, insufficient beat.  With every failing, flopping valve.  Faintly pulsing, “ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…ba…bump…ba…” (Nothing.)

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, ad nauseum.

Sometimes my heart remembers itself and resumes, “ba-bump…ba-bump”. Sometimes they need to lovingly -read: shockingly- remind it.

Wherever she went, and I like to think it was to the cafeteria so she could fret over black coffee, I know she hears it.

“ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Sip. Fret. Sip. Mourn.

“my-want…my-wish…my-world…”

Sip. Fret. Sip. Mourn.

“come-back… come-back… come-back…”

She’ll come back.  She always does. I think that’s what wakes my heart up when it falls asleep with my eyes, just knowing I did that to her.

For everything I could say about Imogene, and Lord knows I could go on, Imogene could wax poetic about me.

It was these eyes, heavy lidded liars that they are.  It was this heart, this weak, poisoned, ineffective quitter.  We’ve got her.  We always will.

I died today, even if only for a minute.

Thank God it happened too, because I was beginning to worry I was never really alive to begin with.

The Lake Effect: Cognitive Therapy for the Recovering Addict 

Turns out, I’ve been rescued.

One second I’m contentedly bleeding on the side of the road, the next thing I know I’m propped up on crisp, white pillows looking out a window over a lake.  It’s really beautiful, too, littered with huge majestic cranes and little multi-colored ducks.  Fish occasionally jump around happily, albeit dangerously what with the cranes and all. The sunset turns the ripples every shade of orange I never knew existed, my limited world before was nothing but black and gray and red. It makes me sick.  I wanna drown myself in that stupid fucking lake so I don’t have to see it anymore.

Some “Good Samaritan” plucked me from my happy place in the dirt and took me to be taken care of.  I was too weak to protest, I suppose.  I mean, I couldn’t have even been conscious because I definitely would’ve put up a fuss. All of that devotion, my loving, pain-staking devotion to her. All those wounds, all the punctures and gashes, some haphazardly, half-heartedly stitched, some left ripe and raw, the marks and reminders I worked so hard to keep alive and bleeding so I’d have a little Imogene every now and again, everything perfectly bandaged and Neosporin’ed.  They were… healing, for Christ‘ sake. They were gauzed and taped so tight I couldn’t even root around for scabs to pick at. If ever I find this person, this, this “do-gooder”, I’m gonna fucking destroy them.

Imogene, my Imogene… why have you forsaken me?

I don’t know… maybe I left her.  Maybe I let this happen.

I’ll go hours without so much as thinking about her.  Just propped up eating Jell-O, watching the lake.  Thinking about stupid things like painting that sunset, or how maybe strawberry might be yummier than lime, or sometimes thinking nothing at all.  Just looking, watching.  Blinking.  Breathing. 

But sometimes, she’ll rip me from my sleep.  After the sun sets and the lake has gone dark and the shades have long been drawn I’ll wake up sweating and screaming, clawing at the tape-and-gauze armor that securely hides me from myself.  She’s in there.  She’s under there, trapped.  She’s in my skin, my skin is crawling.  It’s like she wants me to hate her.  That lascivious little pink tongue of hers that I used to write sonnets about lapping and dragging through my skin, driving me crazy.  I used to want to send her back down, through my flesh back into my bones so she could settle into my marrow and release into my blood and be free to possess me. But lately all I want is to get her out. It doesn’t hurt, it’s worse.  It’s such an absence of hurt, such a void of anything I can’t stand it.  It feels like nothing.  It makes me wanna tear the damn skin off and burn it, leave everything raw and exposed, open and waiting for her.

But she's gone. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.

And I don’t know how to get her back. 

Every time I start to scheme up ways I might have a little tiny reminder of Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end, I wind up watching fish jump in the lake.


I'm not even sure where I am, but I gotta get out of here.

The first step to recovery is... well, don't start.

So I guess she’s gone.

She’s just… gone.

Just like that.

Fucking gone.

As in missing, to be had no more, to be found but naught, goddamn motherfucking gone.

I keep diving into old dreams, tearing frantically at old sutures with old points, looking for her just like I used to.  Only now, no beautiful rush of red blood and memories.  Now I come up from each shallow dive coughing, I find nothing but nothing.  Like… air.  

So I tie up the past so it won’t get away and I poke and prod at it, again and again, here, there, everywhere, anywhere, searching for that old feeling, for one last go.  Nothing.  Air bubbles.  A drop or two of old blood maybe, not red like it used to be, more like a rusty brown.  Mostly, the stinging pain reminding me that she’s gone, and I missed her.

I missed... I missed... I missed her...

I missed her like a hole in the head.
 

For every action there is a reaction. For every high, there is a low.
 

And so it was with her.
 

There’s a chill I can’t shake.  The sickly sweat that lays on my skin the way I want to lay on hers only sends the cold deeper.  My body aches, still aches from the moment she was torn out of it. Ripped from my spine, she had to unwrap herself from each individual vertebrae, through each fingertip, uncurl herself from every tendon, loosen herself from every joint. She grabbed at my heart as she left me, squeezing it apart into all it’s separate chambers and ventricles and arteries, so I felt a dozen different pangs with every scattered, rhythm-less beat. She clutched wildly at my lungs, tearing holes into them, separating the fibers so every breath would be labored and...

...pointless.

 
I felt positively ill without her. I couldn’t eat, the idea of letting anything that wasn’t her that close to me turned my stomach. I tried once or twice, but my body rejected the introduction of anything un-Imogene so violently I haven’t tried again.
 

 She drained my heart and made a spade… there’s still traces of her in my veins…

It’s like she fled my bones to crawl through my skin.  My flesh itself wants to just finish expelling her but no whining or pulling, thrashing or pounding will make her stop.  No threats or cajoling. No distractions, no excuses, no escape, no relief.

Because… no Imogene.
 

Imogene was always beautiful, from every angle, at any distance, in spite of any veil or variable you could impose. But where she really shone was at night.  It was like the whole world was still out of reverence for her beauty. The moon knew better than to compete.  The stars hid. She shone from the inside out, illuminating everything just by existing. The day she left, the day I lost her, was daytime indeed.  The sun stood still, at its highest point in the sky. The garish light poured over me, exposing the hollowed circles, sallow skin, high-lighting the way my bones protruded. Showcasing me for what I am, a worthless, detoxing junkie.
 

I don’t know if I’m too weak to seek shelter or if it’s just because I don’t give a FUCK, but I’ve been laying here ever since. Letting the sun bleach what’s left of me, turning all the grotesque proof of her absence into a blaring warning to never, ever, under any circumstances let yourself need something.
 

Lifeless. Listless. And empty, empty, empty.
 

Whatever.  Fuck it.  I just don’t care.  I was pathetic before I had her.  There’s no reason I shouldn’t be pathetic now.

Addiction is a classifiable disease.

If that girl had a flaw, it was me.

I made her weak.

I knew I was doing it but I couldn’t help it.  Anything I could do, anything I had to to keep her from leaving.  Anything necessary to keep her here, with me. 

I tricked her. I trapped her. I drugged her. I lied.

Her eyes flashed with righteous anger when she was mad.  They flooded with tears when she was heartbroken. And the shine... God Almighty, they shone, shone, shone with love.  And I did it all.  I don’t even know if I loved her anymore towards the end, but fuck almighty I needed her. 

Rehab is a bedtime story.

Nothing was ever enough with her.

If I was with her I wanted her kiss.  If she kissed me I wanted her tongue.  If I tasted it I wanted her hands. If I felt them I wanted the full length of her body, reckless and warm, pressed against every inch of mine.

I wanted to soak her up like sunshine.

I wanted to wrap myself in her like cashmere.

I wanted to drink her like water.

                  …and then, inevitably, I wanted to drown.

Relapse is statistically inevitable.

The only reason I ever sleep anymore is to see her face again.

To hear her voice again.

To have her look at me the way she used to.

Tonight we blinded heaven itself and we stole from all the angels. We took what we wanted from whomever we pleased.

I used the moon to light her silhouette, she used the stars to light her cigarette.

There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for her, except the one thing she asked.

I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, and when I die of this broken heart I’ll die knowing I never really betrayed her.

 I<3YOU(the remix)

And did I want her? Well yes. And did I feel her? God yes. Everything about her was so YES!fuckingYES! I think the worst part about it all is how EASY she was how READY she was to slake my thirst and feed my hunger and GOD ALMIGHTY want take have want take have want take have I wanted to VIOLATE and PROTECT her all at once I wanted to KILL her so I could bring her back to LIFE I wanted to be the only thing she ever knew about the good and the evil and the world I wanted to be her heartbeat and her tears I WANTED TO WORK MY WAY INTO HER mind and TAKE HOLD OF HER thoughts I want I want I want I want her IMOGENE my IMOGENE my BEGINNING and my END light of my soul my heaven my hell my water my earth oh Imogene want me take me have me LOVE ME NEED ME IMOGENE IMOGENE can’t you hear me SCREAMING can you hear me crying out for you can’t you FEEL ME reaching you’re everything I want out of anything I bleed for you my reason for waking my reason for being my reason for reason GOD I LOVED HER Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end my want my wish my world my life my death my all my everything MINE

IMOGENE- 

I love you so very much, from every corner and empty room of my heart that’s waiting to be filled with you.




We ran many circles during the course of what we were, each one it seems beginning and ending in my obsession with her.

Her voice or her smile, her tears, her touch, her taste, her oh…

I would spend all day basking in the memory of the way her mouth tasted, turning each tiny detail of it over and over in my own, tonguing every discrepancy in flavor. I’d roll it around like fine wine, savoring the taste of her, just to be surprised when I kissed her again that night.  Every time I’d coax her lips open the sheer fucking YES of it all overwhelmed me to the point I had to break contact. Maybe it was to regain some of my senses.  Maybe it was to catch my breath. Maybe it had something to do with the way she looked in that split second; lowered lashes and face in slight pursuit of mine, those lips pursed and flushed and full of excitement. Electric with it. Ripe and raw with the hot blood that rushed up to meet me. 

Yeah, I excited her. With the volumes of ‘what the fuck?’ I could write about how it all turned out, at least I had that. Obsession is dangerous, and danger is exciting, what can I say?

But me… I needed that touch that taste that feeling of her heartbeat pressed right up against mine, the only barrier between our two life forces being the fragile, stupid skin we had to contend with. The flimsy sheet of necessity standing in the way of us getting any closer.

I starved for her daily. I shook with the need of her. Too many seconds without her and I would collapse in defeat, a sunflower less the sun.

As soon as I met her I wanted her.  I knew that much.  I may have known her name, I don’t remember. I may have known where we were and what we talked about, but probably not.  What I knew was that face was going to be the absolute death of me, and that voice the sound I would die to. Happily, too. The noise she made with her curious little sighs resonated with my soul, a harmony of chords never before struck in the entire history of music.  Like an artist to his muse, I was inexplicably drawn to her.  I had to have her. 

And I did.

And I didn’t have her so much as take her, and I didn’t take her so much as possess her.  I wanted to melt myself into something so sweet she couldn’t help but lap it up and swallow it down, every last drop. I wanted to slip into her mouth and slide down her throat and fill every hollow space… in her thoughts and her dreams, in her past and her future. In her body. In her soul. I wanted to lodge myself securely in whatever part of her brain it was that made her her, to become engrained in everything she was and flush out everything I wasn’t.  I wanted to swim through her like platelets and go wherever I pleased.

And one day, I stopped answering the phone. Just like that.  Maybe I had too many open sores from letting her in, so I needed the new pain of healing them.  I honestly don’t know. To this day, every time a suture tears (there are many) and a hot red drop of blood escapes, I can feel the warmth of her fire. In fact, I rip them frequently, just to allow myself one little drop. Nobody could say I didn’t love that girl enough.  Nobody could say I didn’t want her enough.  I allowed to her to infect me, I cut into my veins and my heart so she could infiltrate me faster, I breathed her in so the sickly poison of her allure could expand in my lungs like smoke.  That love took everything I had, so now I lay day in and day out, very nearly comatose. Ripping sutures one at a time, to keep myself in limbo, that almost-gone-but-not-quite-yet state of total peace. A stitch, a drop, a self-regulated dose of morphine. A fraction of a milliliter of Imogene.

My Imogene.

I’ll always be addicted to her. I always have been, I see no reason to stop now. And when I want her so bad I think I might die, I find new and different ways to get high off her. 

Imogene, Imogene.

My beginning and my end.