THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU
Sergio Alcalde, printed on a prescription bottle dated from 2008, corners peeling with age. He holds the bottle to the light, a myriad of blue and white pills rattling.
“Be careful, Shea.” He puts $100 on the table. His fiend twitch coming on strong. “What’s in there?”
“That’s not my name anymore. You need to leave.” His eyes well up with tears but I am cold, unmoving. A blade tight in my fist because I am terrified of him. He shouldn’t even be here. The boy who cried wolf, the big bad wolf of nothing. Kicked out of rehab, kicked me around.
“Why are you crying? You owe me seven thousand fucking dollars.” I try not to swerve, loaded on a few pieces of white courage. Edgy and irritable. Can’t scratch the itch beginning to crawl over me. Not now, not in front of him.
He stands and wipes the tears away. I stay focused on the pill bottle. My pain in numbers.
When he is gone I smoke a joint to calm my nerves. Pick at the edges of the label with the knife. I don’t feel my thumb open, don’t react to the mess I’ve made.
Blood falls onto my thighs and drips down my legs, like it once did from an empty womb, a valley of sorrow opened by forceps. Sickness vacuumed up. Another mistake thrown in the trash.
A reminder of the day I stopped believing in love, god. The first time I ever made a right decision.
Spots on the carpet, palms covered in red. I think about how the doctors kept me alive with an oxygen mask while something died inside of me. Diamonds on my finger shining under the lights of the operating table.
Wash out the wound, wash some pills down my throat. Alone, even my mirror lies to me. Who are you girl? I can’t even see who you used to be. Shea. My bleeding thumb, my bleeding heart.
I look through the yellow bottle. Too young for a will, too pretty to die. I just wish I had some Xanax, some ladders to get me high, get me high enough to try to climb my way back into heaven.
