Tuesday Poem: "Philip Seymour Hoffman" by Nick Flynn

Last summer I found a small box stashed away in my apartment,
a box  filled with enough Vicodin to kill me.  I would  have sworn
that  I'd  thrown it away years earlier,  but apparently not. I stared
at the white pills blankly for a long while, I even took a picture of
them,  before  (finally, definitely)  throwing  them away.  I'd been
sober  (again)  for  some years  when  I found that box,  but every
addict  has  one— a  little  box,  metaphorical  or  actual— hidden
away.  Before I flushed them  I held them in my palm,  marveling
that  at  some  point in  the  not-so-distant  past it seemed a good
idea  to  keep a  stash of  pills on hand.  For an emergency, I told
myself.  What kind of emergency? What  if  I needed  a root canal
on  a  Sunday  night?  This little  box  would  see me through until
the   dentist   showed   up  for   work  the  next  morning.  Half  my
brain  told  me  that,  while  the other half  knew that  looking into
that  box  was  akin  to  seeing  a photograph of myself standing on
the  edge of a bridge,  a bridge  in the  familiar  dark neighborhood
of  my  mind,   that   comfortable  place   where  I  could  somehow
believe that fuck it was an adequate response to life.

by Nick Flynn

Philip Seymour Hoffman was born on July 23, 1967 in Fairport, New York and died on February 2, 2014 (aged 46) in Manhattan, New York.

This was my birthday. Not a happy event to coincide with one's birthday. I admired the actor's talent very much and I was saddened to hear of his untimely death.

However, as poet, Nick Flynn, demonstrates in the above prose poem, anything can be fodder for poetry or art.

Photo Credit: Dion Ogust

For more information about the poet, Nick Flynn, see:

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/nick-Flynn