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Power is an aphrodisiac It crawls inside you Clings to every microscopic cell in your body

And it corrupts

It corrupts from the inside out

I look back now at the things I did, the people I hurt, and I don’t want anything to do with power If thattables, so be it

I can’t lie I miss the booze sometimes Once an addict always an addict, as they say

Yet I chose to work in a restaurant with a bar To serve drinks to my customers And every time I serve a lass of wine—the alcohol calls to me

It’s a constant battle—one I ht

I can’t let the deet them for a moment

Because I can’t risk the me over once more

My life was never difficult

I was born to privilege Too e, really

Now? Life is difficult It’s a constant challenge that I welcome I finally see how the other half lives, and there’s a certain beauty in it A certain constancy

And there’s Katelyn

Women are my other weakness Booze and woht I was in control Even the woht I was in control

But that was always an illusion

I hurt so many people, and I can never make it up to them But I can at least live a clean and sober life A clean and sober life without dragging Katelyn into it

Even now, her beauty haunts me

I ed back into my old habits

I shouldn’t have asked her to dinner tonight I know it On some level, I think she knows it as well

My phone sits onwith an invisible heartbeat So simple I can just pull up her nued my mind That our dinner is off

Yes, I should do that

I pick up the phone It’s like a block of ice against ers

I drop it, and it clatters onto the hardwood floor of my studio

I leave it there and look around my sparse place

I live in Manhattan I shouldn’t, but I do I shouldn’t work here, either There’s always a chance of running into people who s I prefer them not to remember

But living life anonymously in a small town… I couldn’t do it I tried Okay, I didn’t try that hard But I did look into it

You can take the boy out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the boy