My eyes are all fuzzy from ambien again, 

but these fingers have a story to tell. 

Tonight, across web lines surfed, a video appears on my screen of a boy, not a bit older than me

injecting a needle filled with you know what into his blood stream. 

I watched it while rocking back and forth on my bed, Dick Jones—as always—on the other side of the phone. 

“How can he do that?” I whisper over and over. Feelings I did not think I still had in me rising up as I watch my friend commit himself to a life. 

“He was always like that, Lisa. You know that. He’s wanted to do this his whole life.”

The video cuts to his face which looks… I mean, scared. He looked scared. I can’t even try and be poetic about it right now, he looked scared. Maybe he was thinking about him mom or something. Maybe he was thinking about all the money and well-slept nights he’d stolen from her and how many more he would now steal. Maybe he was thinking of his little sister and her haircut that matches his. Maybe he was thinking about his girlfriend. His dreams of being a famous director. His dreams. His dreams. 

Or maybe he was just high. 

Maybe he’d always been high. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that some people are just kind of born with that level of stupid danger in their blood. Some people are born heroin addicts, they just don’t know it yet. You probably know it. You can see it in them. It’s hard seeing people for who they are and the only one who can’t is the one you’re all looking at. 

I watched my artsy friend’s film of himself shooting up heroin for the first time, tonight. It twisted my stomach, it shook me up inside. Regardless of how he turns out, I know I’ll never really get over this. I’ll never stop talking about it like it matters. 

I’ll keep this story going in my head so long, I’ll probably be able to tell it to him when he’s dead.