Dragged

She’s wrapped around the toilet,
face pressed into the cold, plastic lid,
tapping nails against the bowl–
yellow where the press-ons have popped off–
a fast rhythm, like the heartbeat in her head.

She can’t remember
switching from fast food to dry heaves,
but she does recall her folks’
hazy hours-long road trips in the old
broken-roll-down-window machine.
Cold coffee in paper cups, sulfur and spray deodorant,
AM talk radio hosts cut up with static and
bursts of fresh air as ash leaves the front windows.
Memory is sticky in her lungs.

There she sits
stinking of sweat and smoke,
near empty pack tucked into her bra;
shoes kicked off by the stall door,
stationary as the world moves around her
like lake water.

For the first time in forever,
for the third time this week,
she prays to God.
Swearing, cursing and bartering:
she’ll be nicer to the new neighbors–
and the old ones too–
she’ll swear off drinking on work nights
and start working on herself tomorrow
if he’ll just make it go away.

But saliva rushes against her teeth, and
there’s lightness in her pounding head, and
her stomach muscles quiver, and
tobacco lingers in her nostrils, and
she knows he can’t help her tonight.