by Ellaraine Lockie
If I were you I'd use a magnifiying glass to hover
over every drug prescription in the medicine chest
Look far and deep for danger
As though you were searching
for a lost member of your family
If I were you I'd look to see if suicide
was on the list of side effects
The print might be so tiny that you'd deem it trivial
Don't depend on a doctor's vision to see this word
That doctor might be farsighted
A condition that appeared in older life
long after medical school
If I were you and I saw this word
I wouldn't touch it
For fear it would travel up my arm
and onward to my temporal lobe
Like any weed it would plant itself
Root in the brain's fertile grey matter
Choke out the healthy thoughts
If I were you I'd pour those pills down the toilet
so you won't have to look for that lost loved one
While those weeds are rooting him or her
to the tracks before an oncoming train.
