The Step

I’m ready but I’m not there yet
Standing on the step
Hesitating
It’s a long way down
Alone
Can I do this alone?

Inside
I bounce off the walls of my own rattlecage.
Sound echoes in a ghostly fashion
Nothing to meet it
Nothing to greet it

But what if I could meet it?
This new idea – a lightbulb moment
As this meets that
That feeling
This idea
Meeting inside
And the idea of meeting
Myself

This simplest of things evades me constantly
I am wedded to my pain
My maudlin melancholy
My dance of anguish

And I will do anything but attend this meeting
We – addicts – will do the things we do
rather than attend this holy meeting
I will carry on doing this
I and my holy cohort,
busy not attending
to what begs for our presence.
It is on its knees begging
while I stuff its mouth with socks to muffle the howls…
Look there’s pain here, real pain it seems
And see how I flit from self-accusation: “Maudlin…”
to denial and then escape
into oblivion again

Sweet oblivion
Where I live muffled and swaddled
This is known
Familiar
Safe
This is my world
So what would it take to give it up?
Do I take away the drugs
and go cold turkey?

Or find the resource
that enables me to be present here
Pain and all
I want this for us, for each of us

Enough safety
to come home at last