I don’t know what it is about heroin

Sometimes you’re on top of the bookshelf and others you’re walking, ripped third hand jeans, nowhere at 4:17 am. I swear, when I started, it was supposed to be just a phase. You know how phases go, ask Sisqo. Haven’t seen any straight men dye their heads silver lately, huh? There was just no place left to go for me. Lindsay was doing it. Jess was certainly doing it. Bill was doing it and me at the same time, crazy, I know! I’ve tried to bend heroin like Beckham but just can’t do it. H resurfaces every Tuesday and Friday night at around, I don’t know, right after Maury. My world is upside down. If you’re thinking, “wait Shannon, Maury is on in the afternoon?” Yeah, while I’m at work, I have my little out-of-work brother tape it for me. Sometimes, in defense of H, I tell people: I let H in my system so my body has something to do. Really. I mean, I’m so better else where in my life that my body is like “c’mon Shannon! Enough with the Light Strawberry Banana Creamy Dannon! We need some action.” So I says to my body okay. It has a whale of a time of dealing with H that sometimes I surprise it with Meth. Try that, kidneys! And then people are always telling me, especially police, when they catch me on 37th and Utah, left side of my panties near my thigh and my right side shifting, as they flash those lights in my face, down past my knee, to quit it. But I’m like Officer Piglet Anderson, you need a job. If there weren’t junkies like me floating around, where would your daughter get her My Little Pony? I told her that too. She cuffed me but she know damn well I was laying down the truth. H is the heroine in my story. It has saved me. When me and Bill—different Bill by the way—broke up, I could not manage; we was my rock. And sometimes Franklin tries to pitch them speedballs but I’m like fogitaboudit. Speedballs? I’m not that messed up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus saves too but when does H get credit? It saves, maybe momentarily, and ruins, maybe momentarily, lives simultaneously. Who says I can’t change? Me and H. Call it a defeatist attitude, I don’t care, just give me that spoon over there for a sec. I don’t care if that’s your Captain Crunch spoon! Hand her over. You don’t want to make an H addict mad. I’ll stab you too and not with that that edge, the spoon side. See my figure was pretty before all this—ah hooey! You think I give a rip what I look like? I’ve got Bill—the new Bill—abusing me every night when he comes home from his county job. But he loves me, don’t you love me Bill? Oh, yeah, rule number 54, don’t interrupt Bill when he’s in the crapper, he’s there once a week for his poop session. Nasty, I know. But when H is in your life you don’t have time for soluble fibers, I mean what are you going to do, call Dr. Watkins? I had beautiful arms. Graceful. Like a hippopotamus in a packed mall crowd at one of those High School Musical things with little girls like Ashley Tisdale. Track marks now scatter my arms like eviction notices once did my former apartment. English scholars listen clearly because I’m going to only say this once and 6 times if I’m high: H makes for incredible, illusionary metaphors. I thought about in between the toes but—I know, I have pretty feet. That’s what I told Bill! Go figure. Yeah, I know I could do more with my life but eh, I like to believe in that reincarnation thingy. I mean so what if I fuck up this life. Who else has had nights where they were dancing with roses and in the morning Velvet left a thorn in your side, a plastic 20 ounce Fanta, with a little swig left, was your paraphernalia or that you can see demons, slap them in the face or scream “fire” in a crowd and not worry about the bleeding from your face, that hit the concrete, when a flashlight cop tackles you? I’ll die right here with Bill, H and my trackies. Maybe next go around I’ll be the heroine for someone else.