When I walked into the apartment, a tourniquet was already wrapped around her arm as she was injecting the brown sugar within. A body thin as icicles in spring sat in a throne room adorned with pizza boxes, empty beer cans, and paraphernalia. I gazed into her eyes and saw an innocent child smothered in nations of sepia smoke, yearning for a hand. The Heroin Queen flashed me her smile, teeth yellow like sunflowers. A garden I've frolicked in several times before. She asked me if I wanted a shot.
“I'll pass, thank you. How long do you plan on living like this?”
“I'm not alive. I've been dead for years. The gak just keeps my heart beating,” she replied
“You know, it doesn't have to be this way. You can always quit,” I told her
“To cease the drug is to cease breathing.”
That's when she nodded off. I walked over to her and gently caressed her hair. It was black confetti falling off into my hands. Leaving the apartment, my thoughts turned to life in general. How promising existences can turn into septic ponds in a split second. Back in the day we dated, it was a beautiful thing. The two of us reciting poetry to each other while the stars smiled. She said: “My love caresses you like a storm around the earth, rain dampening the depression inside. Let me hold your body as we melt into heaven like angels on fire.”
And then there was my line: “I want your essence in my blood, the unrestrained rivers flow. Let the dams burst with the intensity of our love and watch the world drown.”
Now she was loveless in her own gulag, the only feeling being craving. I wanted to tell her my heart beat only for the black-haired beauty. Nothing could express the regret to make her understand. The needle was an abusive lover, severing all ties she had. That night it killed her.
At the funeral there were only five people. No tears were shed since everyone saw it coming. The Heroin Queen looked at peace in ther coffin, free from the bounds of perpetual abuse. The pastor said some words about Heaven but I wasn't paying attention (anything would be bliss for her now, even if it was an eternity in fire.) My only thoughts where the “what ifs.” What if I saved her that night? Perhaps the two of us would be on a mountaintop right now instead, forging a reality that would put any romance novel to shame.
After they buried her I stayed at the grave, gazing at the horizon. The sun was hiding from this fretful day behind a white veil. My Heroin Queen is the sun, and I the veil. Together at last and forever, only in the skies. Only in dreams.
