Mia - Living Life Trying, 2003-2005

POETRY

by Gail Peck

found poem after a series of photographs by David Høgsholt

To appear calm, she had smoked heroin
before her mother came to Copenhagen
to visit. Mia, twenty-five, sits
on the edge of a sandbox,
at the playground with her
mother and two brothers.

Now, she is using crack and telling others
to shoot cocaine into her neck or behind her ear.

She’s a topless dancer,
and took a client to a porn club
with a “false mirror” in the room.

When Mia was cheated out of some drugs
by the woman she thought was a good friend,
she leaned on her boyfriend for comfort.
Later, she found him dead.

At a dealer’s house, Mia lay
on a cast iron bed with a black satin pillow
and comforter, one arm behind her head,
the other on her forehead, mouth open,
a needle stuck in her neck.
A table nearby with Camels, syringes, spoon.

She told her dealer not to worry
if he injected a high enough dose
that she stopped breathing momentarily:
she needed that much.

Close-up of Mia on the street,
long hair over half her face.