Addiction as told by Addiction

And here’s an addict, formed.

Pieces of glass and bits of rot pushed into the corner with a broom.

Thick skin that sheds seasonally. A jaw that unhinges as needed.

I straighten her spine, stretch her up, push her shoulders back. Her head rocks back and forth, unsupported by her neck..

I lay her in a gray mass on a gray comforter where she focuses her eyes on a cum stain half way down the mattress while pushing a needle in to her veins.

This is her clay and a ribcage and she’s forming. Shapely thighs, protruding collarbones. Eyes dark enough that, for the sake of morbidity – and we love morbidity – we’ll call black. I say, “Kit, you’re possessed by the devil,” but she knows that’s not my name.

 

Kit is standing, long arms. Daily, she tries to kill herself without knowing it.

I build Kit this way because I built her father this way and there is importance in lineage and blood.

I am disease and I lie, lie through chemically whitened teeth and red stained lips and when I close my fist and twist and twist, Kit thinks of the white bird, takes a glass of wine and pours it down her throat with ecstasy and loathing and great embellishment.

Kit speaks to me and says she is very good with words. She writes letters for people that they can’t write themselves.

And, even though I know, I ask her what the letters say.

We’re getting to the good part now because Kit’s answer, which I know by heart, makes my arms shiver from pleasure and as she lies again, a gray thing on the bed, she utters the words “Goodbye. In varying forms,” while her head once again nods to her chest.