MONSTER

I will never be like them. They gave me up for crystal and heat. Bittersweet skunk and lighters. They are monsters. I am just me. Simple, drugless me. I promise to be free. A promise made almost a decade ago, a promise I swore on my life to keep, I failed. I ripped that promise by the seams and held a flame beneath it. I watched it go up in flames until I couldn’t see anything through the smoke. Oh, wait. That’s not burning promises I smell. This is different. This is the bittersweet skunk smell I could never figure out as a child. I thought it was just our daddy’s cologne. It never left them. It was a natural smell. Literally. Call me weak or reckless or whatever it is that you think I am, but I am not a monster.