They’re on the doctor’s list, the pills to give and take; pitchers for improved digestion, potions to calm the tangled nerves, twelve steps for alcohol addiction, rough retreats for heroin withdrawal, patches for nicotine starvation, grave misgivings for chronic depression
Small cars that go nowhere fast, hundred and twenty miles to the gallon; run outs, four days a week, weekends on the driveway, by the caravan. Not so this fine-tuned body of an engine, nippy in the slipstream; up front & peppy, no need for medication or search for meditation; shudder, blood-wrack at the very thought of it
Still though the headaches, the guilt of kept silent complications, pace up and down outside the firmly closed door. Still also, the numbness, at first light, wake up to the smokers cough silenced by the solidarity of solitude
Think on of cortisone injections, joints that twinge with your every move; hinges, old and crusted, memories, of all that you forgot to ask. Will you be at the party come a week on Sunday? Will you wear the rosette and the flowered gown? Are your parents going to stay over? Say, are those your tears, kindly turned upside down?
It is that time of day, time for automatic pilot; thoughts to be handled one thought at a time:
Brake, accelerate, change gear, turn the wheel, steal away, gone
