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.