By: James Hippie

Intake

The intake psychiatrist asked me
if I was hearing voices,
experiencing hallucinations,
or believed I possessed
any superpowers.

Then he asked me
to remember three words:

Apple
Broadway
Pencil

Twenty-seven years
later I can
still recall them,
like a mantra
or form of
sympathetic magic.

As long as I remember
these three words,
I will remain sane.

Recognition

At the morning meeting
one of the men on the speaker panel said,
“Being sober means never having to make excuses
for pissing in the refrigerator again.”

And that statement resonated with me
more than anything else I had heard
in my life to that point.

Progress

When we earned day passes
the kid from Guam
and the Good-Looking Sociopath
bought cans of butane
at the 99-cent store
to huff on the bus
on the way to
the AA meeting.
They offered me a hit
but I turned it down.
They call this
making progress.

###

James Hippie is the author of the novel The Punk Called Rock and the short story collection Terminal Jive. His writing has appeared online at Zygote in My Coffee, Horror Sleaze Trash, and Terror House Magazine.