I saw an old friend today.
She'd aged 30 years
in the few she'd been away.
Her former glow is all but gone,
No spark behind her green eyes.
Little more than skin and bone.
Time takes us all for a ride,
And leaves the marks on us
To check our faith and pride
But the woman I saw was not
A victim of time, no,
Her fate has been hand-wrought
My heart is broken, I fought tears
While she stood there
Recounting addiction that had added those years
I saw an old friend today
That time and ****** have taken away.
She says she's clean,
Trying to get her **** together.
Her face is skeletal,
The track-marks got her arms like leather.
But she says she's better.
It's hard, but she's better.
She just needs a break,
And if the world will let her
A chance to come back,
A chance to start over,
She says she's clean again,
She tells me she loves me,
And that last part is the straw
That breaks my emotional back,
And the pain in my chest
Feels like a heart attack
And I hugged her as if
I'd never see her again.
And begged any God that would listen
To prove me wrong.
I know I'm typically tighter with form and pattern and syllable counts, but this is some emotional work. I'm not even proofreading. I'm a mess right now. My little podunk home town is a ****** wasteland and seeing somebody that I love so much looking like death really gave it "a face", so to speak. Pardon my language, but **** ******, and the people that sell it. And while we're at it, the doctors that get people hooked on the legal stuff.
