Aripiprazole

 

Aripiprazole

 

It’s that same familiarity of Tracy, California knocking again.

Yes, there are vast brown hills glowing gold under a dying

 

sunset. but then trauma whistles at me. Whistles like a creep

staring at my ass in bed. I try to whistle back because what

 

else am I to do? Submit to the predatory nature of past?

Therefore, I keep my hands clasped only in dreams,

 

and ask questions until I shoot out of sleep like the model

rocket I never got to make for the science fair. 

 

When I was in pre-school, we had swim days in blow-up

kiddie pools. I was scared of the children who weaponized

 

water like a puppet. Splashes that’d enter my nostrils without

permission, as a stranger might a home. The feeling of being

 

entered hurts so much these days. The familiarity of Tracy,

California is knocking on my door again. Uninvited as always,

 

carrying historical texts of the needle entering on repeat.

I was ten years old. This medication paralyzed me.

 

No court order can mend the uninvited

plunge of a needle. 

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