• Always practice proper hygiene. Wash your hands with soap and water before preparing your shot.
• Prepare your shot on a clean surface, like an unread newspaper page, or the middle of a new notebook. You should only place your needle on a clean surface so that it doesn’t pick up bacteria.
• Disinfect the area of your skin where you plan to shoot with an alcohol wipe or soap. And do not lick the needle or area of the skin. Your mouth is a garden of bacteria and it is important to keep them out of the blood stream.
• Cook your dope for a minimum of 15 seconds to kill germs and avoid infections, about the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday.
• Shoot in the direction of the flow of blood, which is toward the heart.

When my body feels it for the first time it’s about escape. Something light and shimmery. The numbness is still below perception and my soul takes a holiday to the places of my Litvak people. Memelland/Klaipėdians, trudging to Melnrage beach, black wool-clad and sweat-soaked anticipating the desperate hours in front of them. Germany and Poland and Lithuania fight over custody of the bastard child unaware of massive future trauma. Ruddy faces cool off in the red tide hemorrhaging from Baltic blackness. Morphine binding to my receptors surges ekstazė, my people of Kaunas escape Sheol through me. A generation of guilt is dispersed through my veins.

I am the heroine in this story.