Med's Imitation

Jeannette Beebout
“Meds” Imitation

Hunched over, staring ahead, rocking back
and forth, back and forth, back and forth, like
an autistic boy watching cartoons…
I’m sweating, itching at the bugs that crawl under
my flesh. And spend hours what seem to be mere
minutes in front of a mirror, squeezing and picking
at the hideous black heads all over my body. Am
I  the only one who can see these things?!?!
My face is pock marked all over. My cheeks are sunken.
I look like an emaciated model, with out the beauty.
I’ve been here before. You would guess that I was
attacked by a chicken as a child, but you’d be wrong.
Generous, but very, very wrong.
The green sweat drips out of my pores. I taste blood
that could be mistaken for copper pennies. Tin foil
and windex, cough medicine and batteries. Say hello
to my best friends. If you are sick, then lets hang out!
I could use your medicine as an ingredient to my life.
The taste of the drugs is both horrid and comforting.
It’s home to me. I’m losing my mind. I know no
words for this, I only know desire and love. In your
words, W I T H D R A W A L.
Give me anything to cure my sickness, anything will do.
I will be thankful for pills, prescriptions, alcohol,
gasoline, narcotics. I will do a little or a lot, and I
will be your slave for a night. Get me high. This will
continue for the rest of my life. But for now,
I let the hot heroin run through my veins like
a family of wild horses fun through a large, golden
meadow. Happiness.
I will ruin families, turn beautiful into ugly, inside and out.
I will kill people, but I won’t die with them, I’ll jump
to the next tweaker and suck the life from them too.
I am addiction.