Every Song You’d Play While High Is Haunted Now

Shit, the blinds open, or your robot vacuum

sucks the carpet clean, and baby’s got a playlist

running in the background, so suddenly this day

of dusting into the spring smells less like Lysol

and more like a dollar bill rolled tight, rimmed

with a week’s worth of snot, a pinch of blood.

No, you don’t know in the moment why, but

the sight of him rolling his PJ’s up to the knees

seems the image of a wake, as if his funny wink

when he looks up at you were imagined, a face

in a casket looking back. And my God, is minor

a key made of actual demons? A, B ♭, comedown.

‘Cause there’s a short list of songs that could kill,

and every time one plays, its key signature leaks

into your veins like each night in high school

spent wondering whether this would be the hit

that went too far. You plucked anyway. You knew

the first man you loved would die young, but you

shook him anyway. And the second man would

never think of you like that, so you slapped a bag

rocky with powder against your thigh, secured it

with scotch tape, and took a plane anywhere, though

you’d be back. Addiction isn’t chemical. It’s an urge

for melodies that sound as if the songs were over

long before they began, elegies for the half-living.

Which makes it harder, when baby plays certain

songs, to stay clean and sober in the dry daylight:

the window’s opened out to the end of winter’s

inevitable chill. It may be spring, but what lasts.