Voices on Addiction

I won’t wear the red flats again. That’s that girl who is in the bathroom forever. I know everybody knows.

“He’s going to want a cookie to go with it.”She seemed to exhale on the mouse’s behalf. Thank God, another cookie.

In the past, getting the ball rolling has proven to be a Sisyphean task. Max admits he has a problem and is pretty sure he can solve it. Alone.

Mayfly larvae only exist in water that is very clean. And for seventy years, Lake Erie had been anything but clean.

My clothes hung, though, I called it draping. I called it fashion.

This is the longest time my brother spends on the ground. I rarely see him, but he’s with me like an invisible second skin. I wear him everywhere.

In the library at the Farm, I wondered how William’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions ended up at a vacation house purchased five years after his death.

I want to tell her that starving softens the edges of everything. When I’m not eating, only the moment at the end makes me feel present.

I didn’t realize until I wrote this: my first interaction with alcohol was shrouded in secrecy.

We left when the boats were shutting down and the stores closed. In the darkness of downtown Miami, fear crept into the cracks of my boldness. Downtown was not a safe place at night.

This time, Mandy calls me. Her words are much quicker. There is the force of meaning behind them, but the slur is still perceivable at the edges.

I read in the kitchen after dinner, after the dishes were washed and put away and everyone crowded into the living room to watch the Twilight Zone or Bonanza. There was a light over the table, and I’d dissolve into…