MEDICATION TIME
We stood in a crooked line
that extended from the nurse’s
station to the activities room,
dressed in our pajamas at three
on a Tuesday afternoon. We
peeled and scratched the Elmer’s
glue skins from our hands in the
wake of arts & crafts group, where
I declined to create a self portrait
out of macaroni, instead laboring
over an elaborate beaded bracelet
I was going to give to the pretty
Armenian girl who overdosed on
New Year’s Eve, having failed to
die like the rest of us had all
wanted to.
Nerves tickled my pumped stomach
when she kissed me on the cheek,
her packed bags in hand after she
scrawled her cell phone number on
the front of my Xeroxed Relapse
Prevention handout. I never saw her
again, but I was on top of the imaginary
world at the front of that line with that
bracelet hidden in my sweaty palm and
my mouth opened wide so that the
Filipino nurse could be sure I swallowed
my lithium, daydreaming about that
crazy girl mixed up with crazy me, both
of us far away from that ward of catatonic
lunch room Pictionary teammates in a
place where we would have more than
just the will to live.
Originally Published in Chiron Review
You can also find this poem in my first collection, which can be ordered here:
