I Can’t Remember what the Pain Clinic Doctor Gave Me

I Can’t Remember What the Pain Clinic Doctor Gave Me

but I do remember washing one, a bright white button, down my throat, while composition papers slumbered on the coffee table, ready to wake, to have my pen rocket across them, leaving so many marks as starbursts after a comet. By late afternoon,

a soft sweat suit cradled my broken body. That was after the Biofreeze sweated my skin; Salonpas pads stickered acute pain in place. I remember the pillows climbed my spine until I was supported against the couch like so many

steps in a ladder. I remember I struggled to swallow the big, bitter pill invented for quadriplegics’ pain—I think it was. Pen still in hand and papers asleep on the cushions, I woke to a world filtered by filmy eyes and dry lips—my dreams

stolen by some chemical thief, each vertebrae sounding an alarm. I do not remember what filled my brain but darkness, and waking, I don’t think I felt any better.