Trigger Warning: Substance Abuse, Suicide”
I saw the children of my generation destroyed by loneliness, depressed and melancholy, dragging themselves through broken homes,
Children starving for the touch of something not violent, for words that don’t lash across their cheeks,
teenagers and twentysomethings yearning for the feeling of their partner, their hand gently caressing their faces and the taste of liquor soaked lips music pounding an atrial fibrillation of molly shocked bodies, hips pressed together back scratching hair pulling leg shaking hormones screaming with pleasure,
who lonely and desperate sat hollow eyed shuffling from screen to screen to screen to screen blind to the madness seeping in through cracks,
who over the days and days, weeks, and months of drunkenly stumbling forgetting what it felt like to love and be loved by someone
Who lost themselves somewhere in ecstasy and tears and hatred sex stung handprints,
Who get blackout drunk on a Tuesday because there is nothing, but break down taking Ativan and praying yearning they don’t wake up in the morning,
Who lock themselves in their room on Dexedrine smoke joints pop Xanax snort Coke off razor blades hallucinate and sob illuminating all the motionless world of time between schoolyard playgrounds and cemeteries,
who lay in bed at night naked and trembling mourning whatever normal felt like before descending into drug fueled mania,
who balled in the morning evening afternoon in their car listening to the radio and screaming and eating McDonald’s and dreaming about fucking or being fucked,
who sat on the counter staring into the pantry feeling dangerous, reading the cans of Campbell's chunky chicken noodle and Heinz beans, beans, beans, and thinking beans are hilarious boneyards and wondering if beans are what madness is,
who sit on the kitchen floor and press the sharp tip of mortality into the soft belly opening valleys where the madness and loneliness and melancholy leaps out in hot fresh blood,
Who walk at midnight begging any man to fuck them, their makeup smoked bruises and sinew eyes dead moaning and crying all to plunge tar into their veins for head lolling heaven behind a dumpster,
who stand at the top of the parking garage on Pandora screaming into sunlight that nobody loved them that they’ll jump tear soaked and snot covered their pants around their ankles smelling like piss and vodka and cigarette smoke, someone’s child,
who drink bourbon in their bedrooms, drunken death or paralysis night after night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and porn and endless melancholy incomparable quiet streets of shuddering clouds and sickness in their lungs in their minds leaping toward the soft asphalt ground or the end of a rope.
by Griffin Wilson
