They always asked,
have you tried the 12 steps?
The jailers, the doctors, the ministers, the therapists.
I'd been to meetings, ordered, committed, sentenced,
and they didn’t feel like sermons or lightning.
One guy said,
it's like 12 pieces of wood,
planked out like a dock over dark water.
But docks always felt shaky to me.
I believed in riptide.
A big poster:
Twelve traditions,
suggestions to keep drunks from brawls
over who's in charge.
I fought over less.
They said take it one day at a time.
One day was an eternity.
More like one minute,
one second sometimes.
I had counted in loose change,
75 cents more for a bottle.
I counted in bottles, half-bottles,
empty bottles hiding under the bed
like glass badgers.
I counted in jail days
and minutes until the liquor store opened.
Now I count in mornings,
30 days, 90 days, three years.
Coins the size of tumors pressed into my hand
like I’m a hero
instead of a man
who had finally had enough
of the soulless life.
Four children,
two ex-wives,
six broken hearts that hoped like a junkyard sparrow.
Two dead brothers,
and zero pamphlets titled How to Bury Blood.
At those funerals,
I stood there and tried to reconcile the math
in my head,
why I was the one still breathing.
Three cats
who watched me sweat and shake on the couch,
wretch into trash cans.
Friends with tails, silent and unimpressed.
One sponsor who meant it
when he said, call me,
who knew when I said I was fine,
it meant I was ******
that every fiber of my being wanted a drink.
He knew,
cause he'd been there too.
Step One said I was powerless.
That didn’t appeal to my literary senses.
I had powered through jail sentences,
prison,
and life under bridges.
Powerless sounded like surrender,
but surrender was the answer to all those prayers
I thought went unanswered.
Surrender was the first thing
that didn’t make me *****
Step Three said something about God
as I understood Him.
My understanding of God was through religion,
and religion was nothing.
The Creator wanted a personal relationship,
and I didn’t understand relationships.
I understood ceiling fans
spinning at 3 a.m.
I understood rebellion and sweat,
soaking the sheets.
I understood fear
like a cancer that was eating away at my life.
But I kept showing up
in blizzards,
in pouring rain,
in humidity that hurt like walking in a fire.
Church basements,
old storefronts,
metal chairs that hurt my old ***
coffee that tasted like flavored water,
old men with stories worse than mine,
young men with stories just like mine.
We counted days of joy and sorrow
like misers.
We spoke in numbers:
five years, ten years, twenty.
I had fourteen days,
then two years,
then a number big enough.
I still can't believe it.
The math never makes sense.
Twelve steps.
A hundred dead friends.
One mom dead, one dad dead.
Brothers dropping like flies.
Three cats dozing on the loveseat
in a square of sunlight.
Zero drinks today.
And that's the only number
that ever really mattered.
And for once,
it's all I need.
It's enough.