he was a junkie and she was a mess

he would go on a bender and end up passed out in an alley somewhere

she would be crippled by fear and voices waiting for him to come home

if she could fix him she knew there was hope for herself

he had gotten hepatitis at some point during his journey from needle to needle

he would laugh and say at least it wasn’t aids

she never thought it was funny but she would smile when he said it like it was a zany catch phrase

they had more mugshots than photos together

he would clean up

a little

and they would try and follow the straight and narrow

the voices would just whisper and she would get a job waitressing at some greasy spoon out by the highway

they would start to do better and maybe the future would seem brighter for a week

maybe a month or two

their personal best was six months

half a year where he would gain weight back and maybe get a part time gig out on the strip cleaning dishes or mowing yards

his record made potential bosses nervous and the connect the dots track marks were usually a warning sign

right when it felt like they figured it out

maybe she got moved to shift lead or he got on full time

she’d come home and he’d have an arm tied off and be drooling on the couch again

one of these times she’d come home and he’d be dead

it was her biggest fear

made the voices scream in the quiet moments

but

if she could fix him there was hope for her as well

she could’ve left him

let him kill himself in an alley

or get shot robbing houses

but she loved him

and she desperately needed to fix him

make him better

clinged to that hope

because even if he was a junkie and she was a mess

you need a little ray of light

even if most of the time it is the lighter under the spoon