Donna Dallas

I’m Clean Right?

Ain’t a pill I didn’t swallow
or grind up and snort
rolled through Broadway
years 
worn little jackets
covered nothin in the cold – that I didn’t feel

Tell you I was numb
always so sedated 
as I traipsed uptown
just before dawn
found the place
to hold me until 3pm
with something to steady me
those breaking hours
took a lifetime
when the demons would kick in
the paranoid sense that everyone knew
I was high as fuck
the suffocating guilt
of shit that wasn’t even real – my imagined self
on a 48-hour binge

Thought I wouldn’t make it home that afternoon
in the blizzard
I should’ve been dead
like Sydney
that same night
we were in the same places
drove our separate vehicles
Sydney drove off the Whitestone Bridge
I drove the Bronco into a snow drift
like it was a winter dune 
and I was Mad Max
in that movie
I could never follow

Rasping and almost unconscious
I found the key under the mat
frozen fingers pawed through layers of snow
an impossible feat 
it wasn’t me 
call it kismet
angels
fate
aliens – call that shit
whatever you want

I’m clean now baby
so clean I can hike four miles in the morning
every seven years or so we re-zhuzh – our organs
our blood
all of it
I’ve done a few cycles
I’m good right?