County Lines spread

Evil

A cross all the living and the dead

Their line is our time

We need them, fled.

A spring day in late fall,

She can no longer stand 

Tall, crumpled, bent,

She has lost the lines that link

Her to her family, friends.

Now lines link:

Road, rail, phone,

Needle, plunger, sink

into an unguarded atonement.

Her lines enmeshed in this stinking net

That offers her a line to sniff

For free. Woopee!

Crack cocaine, heroin,

That once-famed jewel, liberty.

Speeding through her veins, her arteries,

Firing in her brain: O yes,this is what you need.

Just add a line, at any time, make it weeks not years.

You can pay me anytime.

All the fears and all the  tears of this poor child's 

Beating heart, begin again,

She promises:

No more whiskey, no cocaine.