So I have been sober for a few years but sometimes I want to “reward” myself with something. (Usually it’s chocolate.) I have been restoring my backyard deck while my whole family is away on vacation, and I’ve also been working out and doing all the healthy things, so at the end of a long work day, plus swim workout, plus pulling 10 crusty-ass rotten boards off with a crowbar and yanking each nail out, I sit down and light up a cigar I had bought earlier for such a purpose. I recline in my fancy lawn chair under my cedar tree and puff puff gnaw a little on the end. At first I get a feeling of euphoria like Yes, I deserve this, this is the good life. I keep pulling great billows of smoke into my mouth then blowing them out satisfyingly and spitting between my feet. I begin to get hallucinations of sparkles in the sky, like stars that were always there but I just couldn’t see them. I have seen this on LSD before, in my youth when I wanted to enter into unseen realms. They are beautiful. I feel like the spirits of my loved ones are dancing around me saying, You are doing so well, we are proud of you.

Then I have to peel back the paper at the end of the cigar to smoke more, because I am no wussy and I am going to smoke this thing to oblivion. Then my stomach begins to rotate in its nesting place like a blind kitten. But again, I am going to finish this because I have done all the admirable things and I want easy pleasure. So I peel off the next label and keep chawing and sucking it in, releasing it spitting. Now the sky is darker and the twinkles are large swaths of grey. Crows fly over like a funeral knell. I finally rub the remaining one inch on the grass and attempt to stand. I’ve been watching my 21-year-old cat try to navigate the open gaps of the deck without falling in, being very dainty and careful like she is on black ice. I feel the same way as I stand and the stars return in the back of my eyes. I steady the small skiff and row forward, rescue my cat, and place her inside.

I have to go to the store to buy something so I get into my car and float to Fred Meyer. I feel like all of my digestive juices are made of congealed oil and the black curtain of dull fuzz has covered my eyes. I stumble through the market quickly and return to my home, strip my tobacco-wrought clothes into the washer. Go to the bathroom to shower. I look at myself in the mirror, my toxic eyeballs under a flood of gasoline. I say, I do not deserve this. Even from myself.

Scott Ferry

helps our Veterans heal as an RN in the Seattle area. He attributes his writing skill to listening to rain fall upwards from the bottom of a fictional aquarium. His most recent books include his book of prose poems, Sapphires on the Graves (Glass Lyre Press, 2024), and his collaboration with California poet Daniel McGinn, Fill Me With Birds (Meat For Tea Press, 2024). In 2023, Meat for Tea Press published Ferry’s collaboration with Lillian Necakov and Lauren Scharhag, Midnight Glossolalia. Impspired Press released two of his books: each imaginary arrow (2023) and the long blade of days ahead (2022).

Links to Scott’s other books, including his first collection, The only thing that makes sense is to grow (Moon Tide Press, 2019), are available at his website: Ferrypoetry.com