the dingy black and white room with scuttling cockroaches and spiders spinning traps

empty bottles lay on their sides

no more than vapors of past conquests

two bodies lie in a tangle of sweat soaked drug induced satiation

lying on a stained mattress and wrapped in a pile of rags

eyes flutter under heavy lids

chemically induced passion and haze

from the corner a rat watches them, steeling the courage to race across the floor and steal a morsel of discarded paper wrapped poison from the greasy bag

and she moves

spasming in a dream of junk flowing like a waterfall and white picket fences

he doesn’t shift

specks of foam around his mouth and blood dried around his nose

a blackened syringe gripped loosely in his hand

her ass in his other, the gaunt skeletal jutting of her hip bone like a shard of broken concrete just under pallid skin

it isn’t the ideal love story

but it’s theirs

and it more than some have