Ronnie Kane

 i n t o x i c a t e d

b a c k - s t o r y

I hope they choked on their money. My parents.

I was born in late January, the type of January where residents walked knee-deep into snow wearing two layers of gloves, scarfs furled up to the lips. Wheeling floors, hunched backs of nurses, crying mother, I was born on the sixth of 2003, a week too early.

My father had checked his Swiss wristwatch-tarped hands of gold and stainless steel ticks-for the time.

11:17 P.M.

Then, I was three. I had blonde hair and brilliant blue eyes, so blue that the world looked white and light. I had pudgy hands, tiny legs, and I wobbled to walk. I was late to many things than toddlers my age. Perhaps, it was because no one ushered for me.

I blew my candles to my eleventh birthday with more faces than I knew, and the cake was sweet, stuffed sugary that it melted too quickly at the tongue. Middle school began and I recruited myself into soccer, drinking cheap gatorade, dealing with a bruised heart and childish bicker. By eighth grade, I made some choices and they had played out as dominoes do. It didn't matter though, like every other part of my life. Bygones were bygones and I was off to a private high school.

I thought that I wouldn't have to go back to eigth grade autumn where I visited the corner alley of a street of Maine I can't name to you on this paper. One pack of cigarettes should've done it. It should have. wip