This heart of glass

Beware the killers of the flower tube.

Sometimes, a trip to the convenience store can feel like walking through the Valley of Death.

Even today, this ex-junkie can’t navigate the aisles without soaking up the sad nostalgia. I see the ghost of last year’s me at the bank machine, for example, trying to squeeze out every last dollar. I see my old self at the gurgling slushy machine too, where I’d mix all three flavors and fumble in vain to find a lid that fits.

Kids, stay away from convenience store slushies! All the lids have been pawed over by the filthiest hands.

Then there’s the cereal aisle, where I’d find my chief source of sustenance: Cap’n Crunch. And the whole time, I’d have a couple of jittery junkies in tow: Can you buy me a hot pocket? Grape freezie?

How could I refuse?

But it’s the cash counter that really brings back the ghost of crackhead past.

It isn’t so much the rainbow of Bic lighters and torches. But rather, the troubling tray of tiny plastic flowers on full display. Just a couple of bucks each. But early in my career as a junkie, I learned their true value.

Cheapskate lovers don’t buy them on Valentine’s Day. And no mother should ever receive one on her special day. They’re strictly for smoking crack.

Just push out the flower and you’re left with a sleek glass tube. A little steel wool at the end, and you’re off to the kind of race that always ends in a fiery crash.

That’s because these tubes are a major cause of grotesque and occasionally even life-threatening injuries among addicts.

You see, they’re not made from tempered glass, like the pricier models kept behind the counter. They’re thin and grow increasingly brittle under prolonged heat. First, you may notice a tiny fracture. Then the whole tip breaks off, leaving a snarled edge. The tube gets shorter and shorter as the tip keeps cracking and snapping off. Then, naturally, you drop it because — fuck, it’s hot! And you lose an inch or two from the tumble.

Finally, close to dawn and unable to brave daylight, I’d find myself sucking on little more than a glass ring. And for reasons known only to junkies, given the choice between burning my lips off and getting high, I’d always choose the latter. So, I’d emerge from my lair, days later, with painful, grisly burns all over my mouth.

“Hot pizza,” I’d feebly reply when someone inquired about what in the actual fuck happened to my face. Good thing they didn’t ask why my fingertips were so black and swollen — to the point where I couldn’t log in to my phone. The fingerprint sensor didn’t know what to make of my oven mitt hands.

It can get worse though. I’ve known people who nearly choked on their bit of flower tube, while drawing too vigorously from it. Or this one girl who stepped on one in her apartment. You can imagine the inconvenience of having a jumble of jagged glass crushed into a bare foot.

“You can’t just put a sock over it,” I told her once. But, like my own melted mouth, addicts have strange priorities. She only wanted to salvage what she could from the shattered stem so she could keep using it.

The wound did get badly infected, oozing all kinds of pink demons. She just kept changing her ‘bandages’ by tying dirty socks around her foot. I never got an update on that foot, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she lost it.

So why, you ask, wouldn’t I just pony up and buy a fancy, flame-friendly pipe? Well, because I’d have to keep it. I much preferred flinging what was left of it down an alley after a drug session and vowing, “Never again.”

Flower tubes are gateway pipes. They’re for addicts who don’t recognize themselves as addicts. It’s not a problem, I’d tell myself, until you start buying real paraphernalia, like torches and tempered glass. I’d have to keep those things — as investments in a crack-smoking future.

But as long as I bought flower tubes, hope sprang eternal.

These days, when I see that bright bouquet of tiny plastic flowers at the store counter, I think about the journey each and every one is destined to make.

They all begin as a bauble for a little harmless experimentation.

Then they become broken glass. Then they break hearts.