Cash lucky - Day Two Hundred eighty-six

Cash lucky

I had that dream where I’m shooting up again,

where the only boy who loves me is holding

my veins together in an act of defiance.

I was cash lucky that night, visited the dealer

one too many times. The endless barbeque

where we met kept playing in my head,

a harmless, broken version of itself.

There is the memory of holding you,

how we went back to my place that night

and kissed until we’d bruised our lips

and then we made snowmen of the bits

of paper I’d collected in a year.

The dealer provided me with dirty

instruments to inject the stuff

into my soul, that cavity that fills

with pleasure until it voids itself again.

There were no beginnings in the dream,

only roads that ended in dark pastures

or other sullen places. I fingered my luck

with the soiled needle, fed my despair

all the pieces of furniture that had taken

up residence in me. In the morning, I slept

fitfully, with a desire to get clean.

It’s as if I’d been driving through the night,

doing what I could to launch my desire

like a captured sparrow back into the air.