HC SMITTY

**Where Hope Goes to Die** “Where do you want your body sent?” Those are the first words you hear when you enter the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh, known as Western Penitentiary or “the Wall.” You’re thrown into a holding cell like cattle alongside others facing the same grim initiation. Then, you’re ordered to strip naked. The officer inspects every part of   showing no regard for decency. You’re forced into humiliating poses for his twisted satisfaction. Next comes delousing and fingerprinting, executed with menacing demands—the threat of punishment hangs over you, emanating from the officer’s foul breath like cheap whiskey and rotten teeth. After this dehumanizing ordeal, you’re dressed in an ill-fitting uniform and reduced to a number that defines your identity for your stay. You shuffle through the facility, watched by guards in the tower who show no mercy. Armed sentries wait, ready to unleash their anger on the powerless souls trudging through this concre...

  How it Werks (not from NA)     Blood has dripped on my jeans from poking around in my arm with a needle that started out sharp.  The dope that fills the syringe is close to clotting the rig, which will send me into a panic. It is becoming harder with each attempt to hit a vein to see if I’m registering. It’s not that I don’t have any veins, I got fucking pipelines. Only they have scarred and have harden as a result making a clean hit difficult. Even though I’m not able to get a clean tap into the shipping lane that delivers salvation straight to my soul. Each attempt that I take a little blood enters the rig, clouding and thickening the elixir I purchased with funds that would send me to prison.  If it were to be discovered, how I got them.  I pray the blood doesn’t clot, because it will render the dope useless,if I can’t inject it. I try an old favorite, that had quit working on me a month ago. Hopefully, that month was long enough for the fuck...