“I bet you could smuggle heroin
across the border.”
He lay across from me on the mattress
and smirked, because he already knew
what my answer would be.
“Just stick it in your vagina.
If the customs guard questions you,
smile and look like a suburban mom.
They’ll never suspect anything.”
He’d smuggled heroin himself,
in a different orifice, back in the 1970s,
before numerous stints in jail and rehab.
“Everyone should try heroin before they die.
It’s good for writing poetry
and besides, you’ll lose weight.”
He knew people on the other side.
They were always holding.
If I wanted, we could leave right away.
We only needed to drive for twenty minutes
to get to the Arizona/Mexico border.
“Maybe some other time,” I said.
I’d lived forty years without intravenous drug use,
and had no desire to start that evening.
I just wanted to have wild sex
and go to sleep, like a normal couple.
“Shit,” he complained.
“You’re so middle-class.”
About Leah Mueller:
Leah Mueller is an indie writer and spoken word performer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of two chapbooks and four books. Her next book, "Misguided Behavior, Tales of Poor Life Choices" will be published by Czykmate Press in Autumn, 2019. Leah’s work appears or is forthcoming in Blunderbuss, The Spectacle, Outlook Springs, Mojave River Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, Barnhouse, and other publications. She was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival, and a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest.
