(Strada și noaptea)

The street and the night are our daily bread

The street has a corner and the heart of the night is a meeting point

You wonder what you did wrong?

Nobody ever gets any answers

The difference is between what you were and what you could be if…

It doesn’t even matter anymore

I had some money, pens, and the holy lemon salt

A few cigarettes bought individually

Coin by coin and lice by lice, they show themselves in the night

Back in my day, a heroin dealer

Would keep 20% of the pure product for himself

The rest he sold mixed with powdered sugar or instant cappuccino

The drug trade is risky in its own way

There’s no bonus when the brain needs to solve problems on the fly

The wait is excruciating

Before birth and until the end of life

The wait is excruciating

The sky had darkened in that cursed gangway

I couldn’t make out anything, it could be summer or any other season

It wasn’t what we wanted for ourselves

But it’s not like today we manage to want something else

It’s not like life asks you what would you want to do?

What do you want to believe in?

What is your hope?

Just as Paul quickly crosses the street

Some people were having a walk, puffing on their cigarettes

He wants to ask them for a light

From behind us

“Get down on your stomach, down on your stomach! Don’t move!” they shouted

When you’re sharing the same carved-out piece of bread

From all corners, in search of substances

You throw yourself on the cement of the night in DIICOT-style

You remember that you forgot your name

No one can recognize you anymore

You ceased long ago to be one of them

You know your trade and the risks

You lie down, damn it, what the hell can you do?

When you feel the end of the gun pressed against the back of your neck

You don’t have time to throw away the syringe, you can smash the vial

And I’m glad, God, that I left the lemon salt on some bench

The holy lemon salt

They make you take off your shoes, undress

You’re glad it’s night

That it’s late enough that you can’t go back home

You forget that you lived yesterday, you don’t know if you’ll see tomorrow

In the meantime, you need limits

But no policeman has a brochure from any center that can help you quit drugs

At the police station, no one asks who you are

But they take your picture, they take your fingerprints, they consider you indebted

“We’ll be seeing each other again, you lowlifes”

I don’t even know exactly; I was 17 years old and next to my name

In some random file in brackets under a question mark

They wrote the word “addict”