The Girl

There are two things that notice more than anything else when ever I visit a cityThe addictsAnd the homeless I don't always see the shopsThe lights The sights and the sounds I see the people asleep in doorways on cardboard boxesI see the pinned and haunted eyes of heroin addictsThe empty bottles of the street drinkers The scatty manicness of the meth users The slurred speech of those on methadoneThis city is no differentThe first homeless guy I saw today was sitting on the cold hard groundDressed in a thin jumper and pantsHe was visibly shivering with the cold His eyes on the ground in front of himWe walked by Stopped and looked backWe were all thinking the same thing The poor guyWe pooled our change and gave him five euro Tipping it in to his paper cupHe looked up when he heard the rattle of the change And stuck his hand outAs if to touch the savior who would allow him to buy a cup of tea and a sandwich I usually talk to the homeless when I'm giving them something But with this guyI don't know He looked so destitute I didn't think anything I could say could make him feel betterWalking awayI turned back to look at him He hadn't even checked his cupHis eyes still downwardsI felt guilty in that moment Guilty that I had so much And he had so little Life is unfair It's all a game of chance 
We went for lunch then And decided to pick the homeless man up some soup We walked back to where he was sitting There were people talking to himGiving him bags of what I presume were foodHe looked like he was rubbing tears from his eyes A lady kneeled at his side giving comforting words We decided to give the soup to another homeless person And it wasn't long before we met another one He gratefully accepted itAnd we went on our way
Last night We went to see a musical After it had finished And we had all piled out of the theatre I had run across the road to the shop to get a carton of milkI noticed a girl with two dogs out side the shop It was the dogs that attracted me And I bent down to pet them and talk too them And could tell by the girls demeanour that she was out of her mind She was skinnyWobbly on her feet And louder then she needed to beI asked her about the dogs She said they were rescue dogs That she was minding them for someoneThey had no collars No leads And seemed really clingy and afraid I looked in to the girls eyesHer pupils were pinned Her lids fighting against the weight of the heroin in her bloodI asked her if I could ask her a questionWas she on the gearShe said she was That she had recently relapsed after a nasty break upShe had been clean for a year All the while she was talking to me There was another guy that was in and out of the shopTalking at great speed to the girl She continued to speak to me Then all of a sudden I just knew I had to get out of there This is how I've slipped before Putting myself in stupid situations I wished her good luckAnd went to walk in to the shop Next thing I knew She threw her arms around me And gave me a huge hugI was taken abackBut I hugged her backAnd in that moment I wanted to take the girl and her dog home with meNurse her through her withdrawal Love her dog in to a happy and healthy little guy
I went in to the shopThe guy was ahead of me Buying everything and anything At one point he turned around and apologised to meI said it was no problem Just then My sister appeared It turned out that my sister and mother had been standing across the street and witnessed the whole exchangeMy sister asked me if I was okI said I was But I wasn't reallyAgain I felt a sense of guilt That I had got outAnd that girl hadn't I wondered what kind of place they were living Was it safe?Was it full of addicts?Was it warm?I also wondered about the dogWould they look after him?Feed him?Would he have a bed to sleep in that night?Would someone let him out off he needed to wee?Or would he be forced to pee where he lay down?These questions bothered meAnd still bother meI feel a sense of survivor guilt I was extremely lucky To make it out aliveAnd relatively unscathed There are so many who didn't It's more the girls that upset meProbably because I can relate to them moreAnd the fact that I know drugs take a far harder toll on women Where I live now I don't have to look at it It's not in my face But here And in Dublin and other cities I see it every I've always struggled to describe the look that heroin addicts aquire after a certain amount of time using It's like their faces all become the sameThat same hollow cheeked, haunted eyes look Like the lights are on but no one is homeI read a post once by Shane Leverne Who writes Memoires of a heroin headHe described one of his characters once as having a 'smack sculpted face'These are exactly the words I had been looking for I couldn't have described it so perfectly 
It's Sunday morning nowAnd that girl is still on my mindI'm not worried though I know that soon she will drift to the back of my mind soon enoughAnd I don't kid myself I know if I had not been with my familyI probably would have gone and used with her And become her new best friend That's the way it seems to work in the drug worldIt's like a secret little community Where everyone is connected by the drugEveryone has it in commonAnd that is enough to base whole relationships onWhether they last an hour or a year 
Something I also noticed yesterday while taking to the girlWas that we seemed to get in to a one upman ship about drugs It goes something like that like this You're using 3 years?Oh I'm using 5 years?You started using in Dublin?Well I started in LondonYou nearly died once?I actually did die Does this seem familiar to anyone?Yes It's a lot like the game we play with out EDs The Hunger Games That's just the way it isAnd I definitely don't miss that 
Anyway Today is the last day of our little jollyWe head back tomorrow morning Everyone else is still in bedTired after yesterday's exertionsIt's nice to have some time to myself To make sense of last night Why do these things always happen to me.....