I found your medication on my windowsill this morning, and then wondered why it had taken me this long to notice it.
The pills sat like little twin robin's eggs at the bottom of the bottle, a springtime blue with little official-looking numbers etched into each smooth little side. So small and bright, tinkling merrily as I lifted the bottle in awe and dread.
Maybe you just brought extra, I thought, pretending antidepressants are in a constant ambiguous surplus, and that of all the things you must be missing this will most definitely come up first and foremost in your mind.
The question of why you left them here will, of course, remain unanswered, and the pills will remain unreturned. I do not wish to become your drug dealer. Don't be worried.
Later in the day, as I sat in bed unconsciously playing old songs on the ukulele, I noticed the bottle sitting upright on my bible-reading journal -- an elegant and extravagant-looking book with an intricate gilded design and a red ribbon. It took me until the second verse of the song to realize I was serenading it.
The chemistry between myself and your medicine was oddly sincere, and I somehow seemed to feel I was being very attentively listened to. I leaned towards it, showing off with an unnecessarily soulful half-finger-picking type of strumming, slow and quiet and genuine. Each word was sung softly and without reserve, and I once in a while glanced shyly towards the bottle without realizing the ridiculous circumstances of the performance.
And oh, the bottle was beaming. It practically lit up the room. I could all but feel it harmonizing at the last chorus, you know that part. It requires two voices for the full wordless meaning to be achieved. The ending drew itself out, spacing the distance between notes like runners in slow-motion at the end of a race, wishing to hold the moment as long as it was possible to be held.
And the last chord rung, simple and small, a few inches around us, for about three fifths of a moment.
I wanted your pills to cry.
I lifted the lid and it smelled like your mother and I wondered why I knew what that smell was.
I could throw them away, of course, or flush them down a toilet. They're not anything heavy or serious, really. Just a temporary buoy. "To function," as you explained. Like a machine. The vastly misunderstood and complex machine of the human soul.
Or I could take them. Two little blue robin's eggs wouldn't really change anything. It's just like coffee or whiskey or sugar or any other legal and popular drug.
There are times in life in which it is necessary and helpful to cut your heart out of your chest, and this is one of those times. The hand must be clean and the blade must be sharp and you must be kind to yourself, please. You'll only have to break a couple of ribs. Slice the arteries first, and then the aorta, and do so as quickly as possible. Then finish with the pulmonary veins and vena cava. Lift it out gently and leave it in a clean basin of hydrogen peroxide for thirty seconds to three months, but no longer. Then stitch it back into place and realign the ribs. It is a fairly simple surgical procedure, meant to be taken entirely literally.
You must be kind to yourself. One of the most important rules, which I should have written into the list, is this: Do not ask to be understood.
The pills sat like little twin robin's eggs at the bottom of the bottle, a springtime blue with little official-looking numbers etched into each smooth little side. So small and bright, tinkling merrily as I lifted the bottle in awe and dread.
Maybe you just brought extra, I thought, pretending antidepressants are in a constant ambiguous surplus, and that of all the things you must be missing this will most definitely come up first and foremost in your mind.
The question of why you left them here will, of course, remain unanswered, and the pills will remain unreturned. I do not wish to become your drug dealer. Don't be worried.
Later in the day, as I sat in bed unconsciously playing old songs on the ukulele, I noticed the bottle sitting upright on my bible-reading journal -- an elegant and extravagant-looking book with an intricate gilded design and a red ribbon. It took me until the second verse of the song to realize I was serenading it.
The chemistry between myself and your medicine was oddly sincere, and I somehow seemed to feel I was being very attentively listened to. I leaned towards it, showing off with an unnecessarily soulful half-finger-picking type of strumming, slow and quiet and genuine. Each word was sung softly and without reserve, and I once in a while glanced shyly towards the bottle without realizing the ridiculous circumstances of the performance.
And oh, the bottle was beaming. It practically lit up the room. I could all but feel it harmonizing at the last chorus, you know that part. It requires two voices for the full wordless meaning to be achieved. The ending drew itself out, spacing the distance between notes like runners in slow-motion at the end of a race, wishing to hold the moment as long as it was possible to be held.
And the last chord rung, simple and small, a few inches around us, for about three fifths of a moment.
I wanted your pills to cry.
I lifted the lid and it smelled like your mother and I wondered why I knew what that smell was.
I could throw them away, of course, or flush them down a toilet. They're not anything heavy or serious, really. Just a temporary buoy. "To function," as you explained. Like a machine. The vastly misunderstood and complex machine of the human soul.
Or I could take them. Two little blue robin's eggs wouldn't really change anything. It's just like coffee or whiskey or sugar or any other legal and popular drug.
There are times in life in which it is necessary and helpful to cut your heart out of your chest, and this is one of those times. The hand must be clean and the blade must be sharp and you must be kind to yourself, please. You'll only have to break a couple of ribs. Slice the arteries first, and then the aorta, and do so as quickly as possible. Then finish with the pulmonary veins and vena cava. Lift it out gently and leave it in a clean basin of hydrogen peroxide for thirty seconds to three months, but no longer. Then stitch it back into place and realign the ribs. It is a fairly simple surgical procedure, meant to be taken entirely literally.
You must be kind to yourself. One of the most important rules, which I should have written into the list, is this: Do not ask to be understood.
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