October comes again and I am still a child, a speck 

lost on the water’s violent stillness. My face fat

and boyish, I am wasting away inside, cocooned

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in morphine’s black embrace. The days are waning, pulling

goosebumps from my skin. I hunker down behind my eyelids, 

staying warm. I am opening my throat, taking gulps of acrid syrup.

I am falling to the floor. 

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I’ve convinced myself my youth is used up, like

I’ve somehow spent it all in fifteen years. I am turning 

away from the world, slumped over a bus seat. I dream

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of dying, standing over the rocks at night, staring

out past the sea. The whitecaps lapping at one another like rabid dogs, 

their mouths frothing with salt. 

Averett Hickey