I was planning on talking about needles before I started cleaning out the medicine drawer. Then there they were, not exactly the kind I use to use, but near enough to give me a jolt. The same plastic wrapping the way they used to come out of the vending machine at the hospital. Not a vending machine but you know what I mean, or perhaps you don’t; we use to stop by and pick up new fits from a box outside, a clean needle exchange, nothing’s every really clean with needles. My body would know before I did, the shake that was coming, it would curl into itself, quake, I’d feel sick, my hands would rattle. That journey home with our supplies was filled with dread and excitement. There was such subterfuge to it, we’d clear the decks, curtains closed, shutters drawn, friends we might have seen on the way turned down, a rush to get started, possessions scattered. Always sitting on the floor, I don’t know why, perhaps nearer to drop something, less far to fall. Not that what I was using was drowsy. It was the opposite, crystal meth, a day and night ahead of me of writing so intense my legs would swell. But I want to talk about the process, I want to get into it because I’d watch it so keenly when I was learning and I’d do it so expertly once I’d learnt. I was good at it. The reassuring packaging, the sterile water and not so sterile spoon. How much, always a guess and a risk, a shake and tap of fragile plastic, a lip to knock back. A burn and soak into cotton wool balled up so small it would filter, the belt or tie or thin rope around my arm, alternating, I was ambidextrous. The press of clean sharp, the draw back of blood, the push of that precious liquid my body knew was coming, it was as if time stood still. I was interrupted once at that moment, a cooee! knock on the door and a scramble, hiding things, furious inside, outside pretending. Go away I thought while keeping it snappy enough to dispel long conversation, certain I’d tricked her, my friend, that she’d walk away without a clue and not think huh. It ruined the moment. I had to start again. Because the high begins at first planning shall we have a taste? And the having it - that flick flick on the upright hard body, the air bubble knocked out, the safety measures so acute for something so broadly dangerous, the finding the vein, that sharp intense pain, the everything stopped in my throat - that is only a part of it. When I see a needle in the medicine drawer I remember the all consuming hunger, how it eclipsed and narrowed hurt to a single prick of light so intense that life became dark around it. I remember the years lost. I remember the why, the point.
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Darkly seductive prose, delivered perfectly through the eye of a needle. Thank you Ella 🌸♥️
Powerful writing. I love the way the piece starts with 'needle' and ends, ambiguously, on 'point'. It's like we have worked our way through the syringe.