Denial.
That was the first reaction.
Frozen: in a dead-locked stare
with a fluorescent, empty bottle.

Panic hit me like a whip across the face.

Searching, searching for even just one—
turning up more of those hollow, orange canisters
lined with the occasional powder.
Like a half inch of snow that doesn’t stick.

Then came the fear,
The fear of the fall—
dropping from my faux paradise
into the savage purgatory
they like to call reality.

But I return with casualties.
A constant presence,
A growing dependence,
festering like an invisible tumor of the mind.

A parasite corrupting every thought;
making every choice a paradox.

Kill or Be Killed.
But I am alone.

Both beating and bleeding
and barely breathing;
every nerve exposed,
both burning and freezing,
and these visions I’m seeing
and my thoughts over-teeming,
my whole body screaming,
knock knock knock knock
and my mind is unweaving,
I beg you; I’m pleading

Help me.