A Widows Daughter

Marie was nineteen. She had pale white skin. She had long beautiful legs. She also had bags under her eyes. And Marie had decided to forget about life. From what she remembered of her mother, the woman had been old, crazy, and mean. As her mother aged, she had done her best to avoid her.
Marie had been working at a chain restaurant, the kind if you run into one anywhere in the country they all look exactly the same. She hated her job, but at least it paid for her fix.
She had started off small enough. Just a few pills. Nothing too exiting. However, being the girl she was, Marie eventually worked her way up the latter to junk. Now she was pouring all of her money into her arm. Her mother would have been so proud.
Some fellow users had started squatting in an old abandoned warehouse. When she was evicted from her apartment she joined them. She had started to take on the look of a skeleton, her once round breasts had seemed to disappear, her eyes seemed to sink further in and her face bore a sullen look. She hadn't been able to afford much food anymore, since junk was so expensive. The nice thing was that when your on it, it didn't matter anyway, and when your off it, your only concern is how to get more.
One night Marie got up from a deep sleep. She left the warehouse and wandered outside in a hallucinatory daze. It was a very cold night, but she didn't seem to feel the cold wind biting into her. She wandered towards the harbor and made her way to he edge of the dock. She saw herself like she had been five years ago. She was beautiful again and carefree. A few friends and herself had gone to the beach on a warm summer day. One of the boys with them was a real rebel, he had stolen a six-pack from his father. Marie remembered how good the warm water felt. She felt all of her pain, and all of her suffering inching away as she slid in the water. Suddenly as reality made its presence know, she realized she was sinking. Her body had seized(sic) and went into shock entering the cold water.
She didn't struggle as icy water poured into her mouth. She felt her lungs explode with a stabbing pain. Marie, thought about trying to cry out for help, but decided it was a futile thought. Who would help a drowning junky sinking in icy water? She couldn't imagine anyone risking their life for what society had already thrown out.
She returned to her hallucinatory bliss. As she sank deeper, she remembered her mothers funeral. She had been angry that the casket had been closed. Marie wanted to be sure the old woman was dead. No one seemed to be crying that day, but some spinsters were making a strange squawking sound. Perhaps, she had wondered, perhaps that is just how they cry. She hadn't really cared, or wanted to understand. The whole day was a frustration for her. She had to remain clean for twenty-four hours. It would have gone better if Marie hadn't had a seizure from withdrawal during the funeral. This wouldn't have been the worst thing except she was one of the pall-bearers carrying the coffin. It dropped and her dead mother rolled out into the dirt while her junk addicted daughter seized.
Marie remembered the hospital she had woken up in after her mother's funeral, or perhaps she was in a new one. She heard people talking in tongues she could not understand. A large Irish dock worker smiled and told her she would be alright. She didn't recall him being in the hospital after the funeral. The hospital itself seemed wholly unfamiliar. It was then that dear sweet Marie realized this large man had robbed her of the peace she felt in the icy water. From that moment on she knew she hated that man, and she swore she would avenge herself.
After a period of convalescence and rehabilitation Marie set out to avenge her injured pride. The thing about junk users is, even after treatment, they still want one more hit. Eventually she was back living in the old warehouse with the other users. One night, she awoke in a daze. Much like the night before in fact. She decided she was going to go find that awful man who had saved her, and kill him.
She took with her a long knife that she had kept for protection. She hoped to find him, plunge it into his chest and have one more hit before the sun rose. Waiting at the edge of the dock she saw a figure slowly approach. At that moment she drew her knife and leaped at it. To her surprise the shadowy figure reacted in the same fashion. Marie wrestled with the assailant until she felt the knife plunge deep in her stomach. First once, then again and again. She felt the cruel stabbing pain. However each time the knife plunged into her she had stripped away one more of life's cruel illusions. Finally she realized, there had been no assailant, and she had been struggling with herself the whole time.
With what was left of her strength she stumbled toward the edge of the dock. She stood upright, and gripped her knife tightly as she stared across the cold blue water. At that moment Marie felt something she could hardly recognize. Standing there, with one foot still in this world and the other in oblivion, for that instant, perhaps the first time in her life, we can imagine Marie happy. That instant before the leap, soaked in blood, she rejects the world and climbs into the cold water. She frees herself, and although Marie dies by her own hand, the hand that broke the flesh is also the hand that broke her fetters.

~Thus Spoke Jean

Inexplicability

Gripped by a terror, A terrific feeling,
An awesome motion, a state of aw,
A man is confronted with a cruel joke,
The joke is his life, the punch line his work,
He bled his best years dry,
Working for the faces of dead men,
Educated to endure,
To sell his soul for excess,
An equation he could not solve,
A riddle too strange,
A man came to know,
He knew his life meant nothing,
His efforts were futile,
Man was the measure,
The measure of failure.

~Thus Spoke Jean

Imbued with Insignificance

Signified once and awhile,
Seeking something of value,
valuing only that which has no value,
imbuing absurdity with meaning,
unmeaning that which meant so little.

That which means so much,
It is so insignificant,
It is the farthest I can see,
Cataractic eyes blind from stupidity.

Stupefied by filth and degradation,
Degraded by form,
Trash forming in the gutter,
Patterns of sensibility,

Sensible to consume,
All consumption leads to waste,
Waste leads to filth,
Filth imbues this world with significance.

~thus spoke Jean