A Dozen Pills
Empty bottle sweating on the table, glass gone cloudy in the early light,
The sun cuts sharp through filthy blinds, no warmth, just the geometry of defeat.
The mirror catches a face I barely know–
Eyes ringed in exhaustion, skin drawn thin by a thousand restless hours,
The voice in my head is a faded whisper,
Drowned out by instructions printed on plastic and foil.
Every prescription bending my will,
Each little capsule another verdict,
Stacked in careless towers on the kitchen counter,
Their colored shells promising relief, or silence, or nothing at all.
Blood thinners for the clots, antacids for the burn,
Pills rising in a lopsided column, threatening collapse–
A circus of chemicals, a choir of mismatched warnings,
Each bottle chiming in its own tune,
None of them offering a song I recognize.
The air smells like antiseptic and old regret,
And hope is just another warning label:
Swallow with water, repeat as needed,
Ignore the side effects if you can.
A dozen pills on the counter,
A code to decipher at six a.m.–
Which one for the ache, which for the sorrow,
Which to keep the world from spinning or to start it again.
A dozen desperate prayers, dry-mouthed and mechanical,
Chasing some color in these washed-out blues,
Trying to remember which pill brings sleep and which one steals it away,
Which one will let me stand and which keeps me under.
Antidepressants blunt the edges,
Viagra in the drawer for a hard laugh at the past,
Aspirin thinning blood and time,
Each pill a different shape, a different lie–
Some bring a storm, others bring nothing but dead air,
But all of them promise I’ll feel less or more or something.
Sleeping pills hunt the dreams down and put them to bed,
Stimulants drag the bones through another sleepless dawn,
The cocktail is bitter–no matter the chaser–
Tastes like fear, tastes like hope, tastes like surrender,
Always chasing the darkness with a trembling hand,
Or chasing the light that won’t hold still.
Balancing on the edge of reason,
Dancing with the void–
Doctors call it medicine,
But it’s just a blueprint for survival,
A scaffolding built over the holes in a soul that won’t close,
A dozen pills, every day,
And every one just another gamble
On how much of me comes back tomorrow.