Carson Borbely: “Medication”

“Medication” by Carson Borbely:

I love my small world. Morning. Ultraviolence on & faded in the background, the slow, preening rocket of Lana’s voice. ‘My boyfriend’s pretty cool / but he’s not as cool as me’. The half moon of powder, 5 milligrams. The dust chalk it prints on my fingers & the blue disk I chase it with. I love the space I’ve created for myself on this teeming planet, not a niche or a corner but a vein, a path. The river I walk in and the wrinkles it makes of my feet. It’s a vein I can live with even though the rest isn’t for me. I love the smooth rattle of medication & tap water glowing down my throat & hurricaning me into function. I win every morning I wake up with my heart beating whether or not I wake up wanting it to beat. I love when my blood stays where it belongs & it announces itself in trumpeting blushes. Every morning I sit up in bed, I praise the invincible ache. I love what I can’t beat. Whether or not I am happy, I am here, a piece of ecstatic evidence. Praise lamotrigine & the tightrope of its delicate argument for forcing me still & undoing my hummingbird pulse. Praise buspar for its gentle wave of untangling. Praise their union. It is too a ladder, a staircase, a ring of dim & steady light. I love my small world, mouth a cradle for these pills, world a cradle for this life.