coming.down
I need the stuff
Course through my veins
It lifts me up
When I feel drained
Don’t need your needle
I’ve got my own
All I need is you
So I’m not alone
Because when it ends
It gets so cold
I need you there
To save my soul
To share my pain
To help me through
To tell me that
You’ve been there too.
Sharp as can be, he scratches his dirty fingernails down my arm. Blood runs out of the marks as soon as he passes, and I think about how infected it might get. Though my blood is probably pretty dirty already.
“Thank you baby,” I say, my voice a slowed-down rasp from all the hurt of coming down, “But it still hurts the most inside.” He nods, and I know he knows. We kiss, dry, dry lips scratching together; he slips his tongue in my mouth but we are both so dried out that it feels like our mouths are full of sand.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he says. I nod. “We could take another hit,” I offer, and it’s the desperation. It’s my blood screaming against my skin, distracting my brain, wanting to dive head first into obscurity. “It would make us feel better.”
“Yeah, for about an hour,” he spits out. “We’ll be right back to where we are now, except worse because we’ll have been doing it longer. No, the best thing is to live through it. Just stop thinking about it.” Easy for him to say. My mind is going a mile a minute and every other word is shoot, shoot, shoot.
“Maybe you should clean yourself up,” he says, making this face at the blood all over my arm, dripping onto the floor. I watch the scratches bleed; I imagine that all that blood is filled with what I’m craving. And I’m losing it. “Fuck!” I yell. “FUCK!!!”
“What’s wrong?” He sounds so offhand, so far away.
I get on my knees, and start lapping up that blood. I take one big lick and then he’s on top of me, pulling and awkwardly grabbing my face to stop me.
“STOP! STOP!” he cries, shocked and saddened. All of a sudden, I’m seeing it from his perspective. I’m fiending, I haven’t bathed in days, and now I’m licking my own blood off the floor. Ever the optimist, I think to myself, At least it’s not someone else’s.
He picks me up and sits me on the bed. “Baby, please. Calm down. Watch TV.” I nod; I want to be complacent. “Thanks for always saving my soul,” I say and he smiles such a sad smile. “We save each other. If I didn’t have you to save, I’d be nowhere.”
Later, the urge, the need, still passes through me, but it is duller. I feel the pain from my arm more now than I did before. The TV’s on, flashing light and sound through our little place. A wave of tiredness passes over me. I sleepily smile, thinking of my good nights. I look over at him, passed out next to me, mouth open, eyes flittering. “Good night baby”, I whisper, “thanks for finding me.” The TV flashes images of pop stars, actors, and celebrity culture. “Good night TV,” I say, “thanks for being a more acceptable drug.”