Flirting with Death - a Love Poem

1.

In love with the rush. Not the high.

I’d shoot up again and again.

He was a born rescuer.

I was perfect, a bottomless pit.

We sniffed around each other like dogs.

“It takes one to know one,” he said.

2.

Before we went to bed we

went to dinner.

He kept hold of my right hand.

I’m afraid of overdosing,” I confessed

over coffee.

His voice had a nasal quality.

“Marry me,” he begged.

3.

In the beginning we were fierce lovers.

4.

“Shoot me up,” he’d plead, toward the end.

But I wouldn’t.

He thought it meant I loved him.

5.

I didn’t.

I wanted the drugs for myself.

* * * * *

"Flirting with Death – a Love Poem" is from Alexis Rhone Fancher's 2018 chapbook Junkie Wife.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is the author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other 

heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here (2017), and Junkie Wife, (2018). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Hobart, Pirene’s Fountain, The American Journal of Poetry, Plume, Nashville Review, Diode, Glass, Tinderbox, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Her photos are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Witness, Heyday, The Chiron Review, and Nerve Cowboy. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. She lives in Los Angeles. www.alexisrhonefancher.com