An Addict's Fate

 

In the quiet of a warm dawn as I step out and am set free

the prisons heavy gates clanging shut, putting it all behind me.

The sound is echoing in my racing heartbeat

a three-year sentence I hope not to repeat.

 

The last day and night of a three-year confinement

you cannot imagine the fear and intrepid excitement.

 

The sun illuminating so bright with its golden light

out in the world again hoping this time I get it right.

 

I still envision shadows that cling to the grey walls

if I fall and fail to shed my addiction I know what befalls.

 

The needles kiss on my waiting arm I must confront

and the mean streets are calling, "on with the hunt".

 

Outside the world spins with vivid colors and laughter

but in my heart beats the tune of addiction and disaster.

 

A rhythm of doubt, flashes of remembrances I fear

what is freedom when mind chains, shackle me year after year.

 

Each breath a gamble, the air thick with choices

temptations, in a perfumed fog I hear their voices.

 

Like a smoke on a recent fire that was put out

I hesitate, frozen in the past of that there is no doubt.

 

The man inside me, wrestling the ghost of the past

I once dreamed of soaring, not a dream that would last.

 

And in the silence that is sure to follow

I whisper to the wind a prayer, a plea for tomorrow.

 

"Let me find my way, through the tangle of bad memories,

my addictions grasp that lead me to penitentiaries".

 

Into the light, where hope and a future waits,

and when I am free from heroin and an "addict's fate".

​

-Peter