20 Degrees

Twenty degrees chills me to the bone today. Wasn't like that a year ago. The only exposure to a bitter Baltimore winter I had last year was the thirty second walk from my cozy office to my preheated Beamer. Forty miles later, I strolled into my warm home and turned on the fireplace with a click of a button. I would listen to Frankie and sip top shelf bourbon and do my first line. God, life was good. Life was so good until one line turned into two, three. Pills. Heroin. Fuck. I fucked it all up. I couldn't make it to work on time. I smelled of rotten fish and looked like the homeless wreck I am today. Yeah, I was fired but I still had to feed my high. Sold the Beamer. Sold the house and everything in it. I had to. You don't understand the hell that ensues when you're coming down. Death. It feels like death, but you're not lucky enough to die. So you exert what morsel of energy you have left and dig deep in your shallow pocket to get ONE MORE HIGH.

Goddam. Twenty degrees never leaves when there's no place to retreat to.