DRUGS Poem: Victimhood, by Ryan Wildgoose

Slide One
A photograph. A tube of lipstick. A napkin with a faded kiss, smudged and bruised like the one upon my lips.

Slide Two
A broken fingernail. A chunk of thinning hair, greasy and dead, unattended like the child in the back of a van as the mother collapses in the dairy aisle of Walmart. A matchbook with only one unbroken match remaining.

Slide Three
An unsmoked cigarette. A business card with a street address hastily scratched onto the back. A pill without any identifying features, the urge to swallow and determine its psychotropic level almost too difficult to resist.

Slide Four
A set of keys. A crumpled piece of paper with nothing on it but a series of numbers, not enough of them to make a call. A coffee stain where the page was torn.

Slide Five
A knife, rusty by the handle and blade dull, but still sharp enough to break skin. Blood. If this was a collection of evidence in a trial, this might be the murder weapon. They might be testing the blood to see who it belongs to, test the blade to see whose hand committed these atrocities. But there is no question.

The knife, the blood. The lipstick on the tissue, the lost piece of the manicure that cost me more than the shoes on my feet. The pill, its identification forgotten, sitting in the bottom of my purse as I contemplate whether to try it. The keys to my apartment.

One victim, all harmed by the same hand—dry and calloused, in desperate need of the near empty bottle of hand lotion sitting on the gritty counter of the bathroom sink. A series of phases in one person’s life, the blunt blade failing to sever the point where they connect. A cough of ash into porcelain as the last match – now torn from the stem – disappears down the drain.

One last look into the mirror, the crack almost unnoticeable under the level of grime, hiding the imperfections in my marred gaze. The door slams shut behind me as I step into the noisy bustle of the sleepless city to seek yet another means of destruction. There is no question.