Step One: Admission

There are no steps. Being an addict is flying in circles like a goose looking for its lost mate. Days will pass, but she won’t remember them. By choice, by design, Jane drinks so she can stop asking questions. Addicted to what? The feeling of sunlight in fistfuls on her back, his voice in her ear like a ghost, the weightlessness of soaring on something unseen. Even here, she’s scared to tell you what it tastes like. To quit–everywhere Jane looks there are clouds, clouds, clouds and the bottom has always been a faraway place, waiting beneath.

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Originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of the Washington Square Review.