Paradise — A Piece by Adarius Henderson
Drugs were the only way to escape this ‘paradise’. My paradise is not from a TV or movie. My paradise does not blow calm winds that makes the human body feel lightless. It’s not a place filled with the scenic views of vibrant blue waters that make a beautiful music with the wind nor does it have palm trees that conduct the waves and the wind by its aweing dance. It’s not a place to lay down your burden and leave it for the sand too swallow whole and send down too it’s ominous depths below the ground. The paradise I live in is different.
Welcome to the place of the cold-hearted. The soulless. Welcome to the paradise of grey skies and clouds. Welcome to the paradise of cold winds that hurts your skin. Welcome to the paradise where the sun does not shine because of the industrial plants that blow dangerous toxins into the very air we breathe here. Welcome too the paradise where death is our way of getting a good rest. Where the youth don’t get a chance too grow. Or grow too old for their own age. Welcome to the paradise of the killers. Drug dealers. Fiends. Hoes. Robbers. Welcome to the paradise where the plants are watered by blood. Where the very ground I walk on is a mass cemetery of lost people that weren’t respected enough to earn their birth name in their death. Welcome to the paradise where money is God. This is my paradise.
No happiness.
No peace.
Nothing.
Not even a small bug could begin too grow into its final form without being crushed before it could become its true self. This is paradise where dreams die before they could come true. Generational pain is what feeds this paradise. Even the moon retreats from this paradise. The only friends that visit me in both the day and the are the roaches that greet me in the morning from my cereal box and the rats that patter, patter, patter inside my walls in the night. Most of my human friends have since left this paradise. Few have escaped by playing sports. College. Or travel as they wanted to find the real paradise where the sun shines everyday, beating on your face as they let out a fresh air of relief that they are free.
But many of my other friends… well, everyone that were and weren’t my friends, have escaped by a bullet that seemed too finish the continuation of their story. The last of the ink now runs loosely on the ground coming from engraved holes in their body. Or head. On those nights, not many people have cried. Not even those that died passed on with sadness. In this paradise, we smile. Even the dead smile knowing that they finally made it out of this place I call paradise.
This is not a dramatization.
This is my paradise.
And these drugs help me come to terms with the fact that this is paradise. My very own beautiful paradise that I can never escape. As I continue to use, I imagine what paradise would look like if it wasn’t like this.
If it was how it looked like on TV or the movies. With the palm trees and blue waters. With the sand and the wind. Feeling at peace with all things around me. But for the time being let me take more of these drugs and…
bang!
bang!
bang!
