My parents are pharmacists you know, so they were more or less excited to debate my current condition. I sat obediently in a carefully sterilized kitchen, an office of diagnostics that smelled oddly of cat s*** and divorce. Kept a steadfast muzzle fastened over my boiling defenses. I saw holy words pulled by a plunger, laid out impressively on a table; they wanted one that was just right to put my a** down.

Without a word, I listened to college degrees converse over "what went wrong", as if smoking weed was an offense that was punishable by means that under any other circumstance would have sent me out of my mind. Not today. I have been so lonely, and angry, and I'm tired, I feel SO trapped here, a f***ing dog being sized up, guessed and checked, and kicked at, I'm not a bad kid, mom. I'm seventeen, dad. I'm only experiencing new things, trying adamantly to live for the sake of living. I'm here. In this s*** hole, this kennel and as long as I'm cooped up my creed makes me some kind of nightmare. A monster. Under the bed, deep beneath the stairs, in the dark reaches of our attic, in the closet, the vents and cupboards.

Around here prescriptions are shot like arrows, chased by hopes to god that they sting, and teach, and correct. I see lab coats in my home and I am sick, nostalgia has this way of churning your most sacred self, grinding nerves and stomach stuff into a fine, fine remedy. Thick, and sweet, and black like death. And words: they make my hair stand on end, make my teeth bare, my nose wrinkle, I am painstakingly desperate to escape. To strike the hearth with my paws, and work to keep them striking to Santa Fe. Or at least a place of my own.