One Pill, Two Pills, Three Pills Four.

Every day I feel pulled farther and farther away. Away from myself, my loves, my circle.

My dreams are vivid and wrenching, all ice and snow and keen-edged tall bars. A slope of ice to be climbed.

My hands were cut and bleeding, knees raw. I could feel them throbbing through my sleep. I kept sliding, slipping, cursing, and begging.

I never made it. The dream morphed into something mundane, I was grocery shopping. But I still feel the taste of pain and rage in my mouth. My hands clench, and I am shocked to see them unscathed; clean and lacquered.

My hands are soft. Once they were rough with work and will, strong with an iron grasp. They are the hands of a child now, not a warrior. The wolf inside me paces, teeth showing.

One callus, on my right thumb from plucking strings and warbling in time. I will find it. Somehow I will throw a grappling hook into the well of my subconscious and I shall go back there, to that frozen place, that cutting wall.

And I will win.