Her Name is Rose

With a boil the size of an egg protruding from her right hip, she knows what I must do, and to stall me has locked herself inside the bathroom, bargaining for a way out. But it’s too late: I’ve seen the oozing wounds stopped up with bits of toilet paper and tape, the scarified pockets that crater the surface of her arms, buttocks, thighs. A mean fix torched her last vein years ago, and she’s been banging the dope ever since, puncturing her body like a juju doll. She wants to kick, but not now. I’m not gonna lie to you, she says in a velvet voice. I already know what she’s after: something stronger than local, a few Percocet, a shot of Demerol before she’ll let me begin. All I can tell you is, when the abscess finally drains the odor is so foul it’s evil. And I’m not sure, driving home later that night, still smelling the pallid citrus, whether it’s merely hallucination, the way her memory inhabits me; or if being in that same room, inhaling that same air, made some of her part of me. And whose veins are these, beginning to twitch?