June Poem A Day: Day 5

Yesterday, after letting them pump drugs I can hardly pronounce through veins they can hardly find, I felt tired. Those small alley-ways holding so many milligrams of so many things. I look at my hands; there are scars there, track marks initiated by fluids less than recreational. I look like a junky. And the way that I talk about emergency room visits, with ease and candor, doesn't really leave a stranger from thinking any differently about me. I'm not there for the drugs, well maybe a little bit; but not the fun ones. Not the ones able and willing to draw circles around the lobes of my ears, open my subconscious so much that I wouldn't even be able to see the track marks, the scars inside and out. What I am is chronically ill. No one would guess this in meeting me alone. I suffer from a sickness that can't be cured or seen. My doctor has given up on my health. So, every six to nine months you might run into me in the emergency room. I'll be in there for a migraine so severe that I'm unable to hold down waters; tears will stream down my face. I will wear a mask of stubborn determination, to convince myself that this pain is merely temporary; not, a figment of my grey matter's neurotic imagining.