An anniversary of sorts

So I’ve been clean for a year. That’s 365 days. You need to be here, I said at the time. I was on it for twelve months, at least, or maybe it was much longer. You remember the exact day and time you put an end to it but you never really know when it all began, kinda creeps up on you. You need to be here, I said again. But he said, Don’t worry about it, you know, lets you know you’re alive, and hey, I’m not an arsehole. Fuck that, I said, I just need someone to hold my hand okay, please don’t make it harder than it already is. So he came looking for me in a hut with a rickety staircase, and stayed with me while I erased every last trace. Afterwards he kept me company for six hours and eighteen minutes, dragging me all over Chicago. He said he enjoyed talking to me too much to let me go, and he felt proud of me, he saw it sucking the life out of me. What a fucking cliché, I thought, but didn’t say. He took me to his mother’s house, right at the end of a cul-de-sac. His mother wasn’t there anymore, or maybe she was, I don’t really remember, and he made green tea in a microwave.