Passive Ideation

Your eyes resemble Dragonstone rock, born from volcanic fury and tinged not by your own volition. Fate had the cruelest hand to play; your cards were foreordained in some faraway genomic deck of hegira hereditary helplessness.

Just look at that silver-tongued syringe. Infused with a liquified slow death from crystalline shards of septic shock. I know you don't want it in your glaucous veins, yet the call beckons. That pale pull of dopaminergic allure glamoured you upon its first knelled kiss.

I watch as you pierce the inside of your forearm, pulling two fingers ever so slowly upright to plug the fucking hole in your soul. You never flinch.

Have you ever?

I brush your shoulder with my brunette locks, furnishing your tattooed clavicle to let you know I care, to let you know I want you to stop. That's never going to happen, is it? Love is unjust, unkempt, ubiquitous trust dressed in shape-shifting circumstance.

Holding the back of your head as you crane in capitulated ecstasy—for now. Those eyes again, rolling back and forth in such pale sockets, so fucking hypnotic.

The sharp weapon of mass emotional dilution drops from your right hand. With my high-heeled kick, it sails across sullen carmine-colored carpet, and the nearby television is airing static energy with no remote in sight. "Hey, babe. Open your mouth and take a sip of Gatorade."

You twist your face slowly to meet mine; those pierced lips swell with every open-mouthed exhale. "Yeah, yeah, gimme something. I feel good, this shit's legit. You skipping another sesh?"

"I'm clean, babe. I'm clean, yet I'm not leaving you until you're on my path, yeah?"

You chuckle amid a stutter of light, fluttering coughs. Sterilized and dignified, or so you thought. Disinfectant can only go so far with reused needles. Of late, at night in our bed, I hear those sagittal sounds in your hoarse breaths as you toss and turn.

Something's changed. Something's wrong.

It's been months since we visited the safe injecting facility and sought a check-up from one of the nurses on site. This spiral. It's wrenching and warping your sense of self. The bullshit bravado, ha! You think you're the man of steel when you're high.

Lowlights dimming, we both know it. In an hour, you'll carry fistfuls of regret into another baseless night, and I'll still be here.

You tried to get on the sempiternal road to sobriety so many times. Thirty, maybe more. It's not possible, I know this now.

When we first met, you were full of vivacity and warmth. Twenty-three and drug-free, with the winnowed world of implausible possibilities at your forsaken feet. Like timebombs, sooner or later the ticking halts and habits form. It was never your fault.

"Get me some more rock, put the kettle to boil. I'm fading... I need another hit."

Delirium tremens overtakes my body. No fucking way, you doubled up twice before and almost ended up at the emergency ward. I know you want to live.

"I-I-I can't. You've already had too many grams as is," I whisper.

You kiss me with erratic gusto and rise to conduct the inevitable ceremony of annihilative harm with a wayward, swaying gait. Questionable tears well in the ducts of my eyes, still glued to you. I'm your protector?! If I'm not enough to stop you, nobody and nothing can.

Futility is fragile.

Cradled on the couch, rocking with one part fear and two parts frustration. I tear small square-shaped shreds from my fishnet stockings, and as the white-hot steam suspends your gaze in the kitchen, spoon and ice at the beholden helm, I sink lower.

If this is the end, I'll never let them label it as suicide. The invisible serpentine vice of addiction bared its teeth and succored you in a merciless show of rabidity.

Lest they forget illusory choice, I never will. I'll cherish you forever.

(c) Edward Swafford 2026

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