The thing itself seems too big and awful–she liked to shoot up in the bathroom, the list of people who enabled her suggested a big bathroom

Why?

Why do this thing? Where do the needles come from? Where do they go after? Do heroin addicts have sharps containers?

I make the elements of the equation as simple as possible–

Keith died of it

Mary died of it

It must have been a doorway

Why do you walk through that doorway the first time?

What is through the doorway that is so compelling that you must go back–no matter what

What were they running from?

She tells the story as though they were just cooking bacon

Who lets a 4 year old cook bacon? Who lets a 4 year old watch a fire burn or find their own way floor to floor to grandma’s apartment?

Who falls asleep on the bus back from the methadone clinic

With a baby

My baby. My baby now

I cannot turn away

If x equals the thing you must have and y equals the way it makes you feel

Then they were simply bound to x because of y

Like sky or free diving

there is a rush

But this time, this thing, chained her to it, brooked all reason

in the blood and the brain you cannot undo

Alone