The Timing and Reason For Drugs

My nurse questioned me curiously yesterday

when I recounted July.

I had stood like a broken arrow in the drugstore

looking for a way to definitively treat my mortal wound

and he had inquired as to the timing and reason

why that afternoon out of so many

in a season marked with intense loneliness

and a lifetime of struggling with identity

I had chosen to march into Walgreens

and declare drugs as the cure.

My wise nurse, please write the following down

in my chart next to my name and birthdate:

in all my queerness and in all my pain,

in all my shaky vocalizations in coming out,

in all my attempts at being the girl

who could be desired, needed, and maybe just seen,

in all the passive-aggressive times I couldn't spurt

the right words out of my diaphragm to ask my mother

for the right kind of help that would prop me up

so that I could see the sun set over the roof of my home

and look out above with a sense of hope and happiness,

know this, my nurse, that was the reason, that was the time

to ask for those kinds of cures.