Paragraph on Addiction:
From Pauline Bowan
I was younger when I met her. Not much younger, but young enough. Young enough to feel like my world was falling apart. Young enough to believe she could fix it. I embraced her, pulled her close and hoped that I would never have to let go: Even as her hand wrapped around my throat, as she seeped into my veins, as she coiled up in my lungs. She has been haunting me for some time now. Since long before I ran to her. She’s haunted my family for generations, telling them the same lies she told me: That it will all be okay, that we’d be safe in her embrace. In her shifting form I can see my history, twisted and strange: I can see my parents, I can see their parents, I can see those I never had a chance to meet. I tried to leave her, to pull her hands from my lungs; yet I still long for her. I still feel the ghost of her embrace. The lack of her sets fire to each and every cell of my body. A fire that burns so bright it outshines the sun. I do not hold her now, yet I can still hear her. In the quiet moments when I let my mind drift. I can hear her calling to me, asking that I join her once more. I fear that one day I might listen.
Bio: Pauline Bowan (she/her) is a mixed race Menomoniee writer who writes fiction centered around Indian Country. She is currently working on a collection of short stories focused on the contemporary Native American experience.
THANK YOU FOR READING the words from Pauline Bowan!!!!!
This was a stunning piece, a different spin on how addiction lies, and the hold it has on a person (and I liked how you mentioned how it's often generational).