FicWad

My eyes soar across
the brick wall.
It’s littered with children,
dangling by their feet
like fairy lights,
covered in pestering weeds.
I picked the most beautiful
flower for my mother.
It was still ugly,
wilted at the seams
of each petal, the faded
yellow barely
clinging on,
but she accepted it
and told me
she loved me.

Stepping along
the pavement,
off the porch,
and into the barrier
of a house,
there’s a wooden
table. It’s cracked
and old, but sturdy
enough to serve its purpose.
I had used the sharp, jagged
teeth of a key
to carve my scars
of angst into the tabletop, while my mother
passed the pipe along to her friends,
and bantered in code about life,
injustice, the war on drugs.

Walking along, the door
of her bedroom creaks
open. I peek inside.
Along the wall, there’s a tall
shelf and an endless succession
of movies. She used to collect them.
I had watched her
as she chopped
her reality into thin,
white lines in the bathroom
on the cover of Half Baked,
claimed at the corner
with a chicken-scratch scrawl
of Rob & Gin. Highlighted
with a dusting of leftover
Percocet.

Further, deeper,
I greet the steps of the basement,
the ground ghostly, cold
concrete. The furnace is tucked
away in pitch black.
My stepfather had laughed
as he took the Sudafed
that he had begged my mother
to buy for him
and mixed the chemicals.
Virginia’s best chef,
scientist,
addict.

We no longer live
on 723
Dry Run Road.
We were evicted
from 209
Woodland Avenue.
Now, we reside
on 5810 Main Street.
She drives,
venturing further
for her fix. My little brother
and I shuffle boxes
into unfamiliar territory
and watch as she,
as this family
of broken veins
and codependent genes,
suffer.