What’s going on over there? / who’s on with you? / who’s on with me? / how’d they treat you? / I didn’t expect that baby to be so big / my favorite patient has my least favorite nurse / you’re not like most doctors / I’ll take that as a compliment / it was meant that way / I like old fashioneds / I am very open minded. Also nosy though / I’m going to bed / who’s on with me Friday? / please let it be you!!! / wait until you hear the story / I can’t wait for our next stitch n bitch / are you judging them because I am / you get it / you get it too / I’m tired and grumpy / I could do the communal living thing / I'm intrigued by your high school / my mom is very women's rights not catholic / I love nuns / did you make it home?? / I love your sweatshirt / my shoulder hurts / my jaw hurts / are you and your mom matching now? / that’s adorable / aren’t kids the best? / I hope I live long enough to go on trips with my adult kids / you will / 2nd grade is a bitch / lord help me / I’m off at 8, god willing / I’m on my way / I’m at the bar / are you boozing? / take me snowshoeing sometime! / the best compliment I got all year was when you said I’m not like most doctors / you know more than I do / are you sure you don’t have ADHD? / are you calling me highly intelligent? / I want to read it! / how’s it going over there? / how about tomorrow night? / you had better be drinking! / pizza? / be right there / coffee? / yes please / I’ll buy you a negroni / can I ask you a super embarrassing question / I wish we had gone out together
It can sting your throat
It could burn a hole in your stomach if you’re not careful
Radioactive beads can be medicine
Not the kind to make a necklace, the kind shipped around the world for bodies
Killing cells can be a cure
Erotic energy, directed in or out
An intellectual connection even
A book or just a short poem
Plants definitely, if you know what to look for
Someone who really sees you, someone who tells you stories
Pickles, peanut butter, salami or sourdough
The way a message lights up your life, gets your heart beating harder
There are different doses for medicine - baby, child, adult
Some of it is legal, some could put you behind bars
some can be foraged from the neighbors yard
Laughter is best, followed by a good cry
Singing in the car with or without crying works too
A vibrator usually gets the job done
Sometimes you need permission and sometimes you can choose your own medicine
It depends on the country, the government who you may or may not agree with
Sometimes it takes weeks to work, sometimes it’s a matter of seconds
Sometimes blood is the medicine, fortified from another body
Sometimes you take it everyday for the rest of your life
Sometimes a few years, or a few days, or you poke yourself
Everytime you eat, there’s so many ways to take it
Maybe it’s a secret you carry with you
Maybe it’s finally telling the truth to yourself
Or a subjective honesty
The realization that anything can be medicine if you let it
It would have been easy not to know each other,
easier still not to let a weird love develop.
Two people with very little in common,
a decade between us, different coasts,
your mother the oldest of 6, my mother the youngest, 10 years between them.
What did you see in me?
An awkward anxious straight A student, but I was down to adventure and you a perfect tour guide.
You with your big life, your big laugh, traveling with the band, partying all night, driving fast, pointing out landmarks and their history.
You remembered everything, you remembered everyone, you remembered why it mattered.
Picking me up and taking me to dinner, to a museum, to tour colleges, to our grandmother.
What we loved: eating, drinking, communism, music, art, the beach, our family.
We are doing our best without you.
We are calling each other.
We are sharing memories.
You would be proud of us, sometimes.
But we don’t know how to love each other the way you did.
I wish you could have felt the force of your own love.
the eagle in me always perched
and watching
my love rains down like an
atmospheric river
washing out roads, levees,
whole homes floating away
GO NOW the orders say
STAY SAFE says the other side
my hands gripping
the wheel in me to keep
from blowing away
Something in me moves.
It’s not alive, though,
more like a sliding door
pushed aside smoothly in its track
not making a sound.
All of a sudden a new hallway
appears where there was
once a wall.
My chest flushes,
looking.