Poetry

Medication

The paraphernalia of drunkenness
loiters
like cigarette smoke,
musty and sour:
groggy perfume;
words stale as spilt beer;
last night’s faces waning
like wet snow
through a
windowpane.

There is shame
  in my appearance here;
the case history tumbling out,
the proverbial loose screw.

I don’t know when it began.
The slow ache,
gradual as dust building
on a skirting board.

Too late, you remember
the housekeeping;
while the arteries of home
have clogged
with grime
and gas has poured
slow and steady
in.

This plaster over
has worn
dangerously
thin

and pills can’t paper over
these cracks.

Laura Fensterheim