This poem was one of two 2nd place winners in the 2019 Words Unlocked poetry contest hosted by the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings.
I am white and crystalized,
My world is through the eyes of people that see dark skies,
I take him or her through it all, I am running through the veins when they overdose and fall,
I love the addicts who come back for more,
I get inside little girls and close the door,
I don’t want to be me but I’m too scared to die,
I can see everyone lie, I watch men rape girls and sell me,
I am hard to make so they pay their fee,
I see the men who think their able to treat them and me this way,
I know it’s all because they shoot me into their bodies every day,
My name is tweak but the guys with the flashing lights call me methamphetamine,
Why live when people only want you to use,
I want to win but they always get caught and I lose,
I always end up taking a family away,
Why can’t they just love me without all these prices to pay?
I don’t want you to be addicted I just want you to want more,
That is who I am, I’m rotten to the core.
I know you heard about tweak but let me tell you about me,
Paranoia taken over my mind,
Needed to get away,
I hid the side of me I didn’t want them to find,
I belong to the game, the game that you don’t want to play,
Where big guys make you take your clothes off,
Hands sliding down,
Needles entering them just to feel that cough,
The big man won’t sell me anymore,
He doesn’t allow anyone else to touch me,
He is what I am for,
Padlocks on the windows and of course they locked me inside,
He put his hands around my neck,
I screamed and he said don’t worry it’ll be alright,
He said I just want to show you what it feels like,
I let him of course, Ride me like a bike,
He let me go in hopes I would come right back,
I ran as fast as I could,
I hid in someone’s backyard and that’s when I heard the pack,
The sound of their heavy breathing finally stopped,
I ran out because I thought they had left,
They grabbed me in an instant,
I went back and he shoved me full of meth,
The man who did this to me for months was never far away,
I got pregnant and that was it he was going to be a daddy now,
He got really mad one night and kicked me, I started to cry and held my side,
The baby was gone it died,
I got away to get pregnancy tests without him knowing,
He searched for me scared I might not come back,
The cops found me and wouldn’t let me go,
They found the drugs in a house raid,
I hope this will change some way,
This is happening behind closed doors every day.
McKenzie attends Juniper Hills High School at the Juvenile Correctional Center, Nampa in Idaho.