Preface To an Addiction

There’s a legend
of a ghost that lived
in a pill bottle
found by a young child
under the leaves
at the edge of his driveway.

The name on the bottle
had leaked off in the rain
long ago, the pills
had crusted and fused
inside, a thick crumb cover
of white holding them in place;
the boy stuck a pencil in
and pried them loose,
shook them out onto the ground.
All he wanted was the bottle
to hold something else he’d found.

The ghost of the bottle
slipped into the air, moved
out into the world, barely rustling
a leaf as it rose through the thin
October trees to seek its original owner
who had died or gone missing
and left it behind. 

It would have fastened on the boy,
but it chose to wait.  At seven,
the boy could not have held the ghost;s interest
for long; he would need more age and pain
for the ghost to cling to.

But the ghost would remember
this boy, his poking at the leftover pills,
how he stripped the label off
and made the bottle his own.

Genies serve the masters who find them;
ghosts master the moments in which they’re found,
and this ghost had all the time in the world
to wait for the boy to grow into his moment.