Sugar Pills

Sugar Pills

We are sliced up along the patio,

Acrid smoke from green substance

Twisting tendrils in her hair.

She looks to me with candid eyes -

As if I don't know Mary Jane

But I kiss her forehead

Still tasting baby's breath of bewilderment.

She reaches for my hand and pulls me in.

I rise, actor in scene.

The sea of lawn, we spin in the surf,

Our feet damp as if we had waded in shallow

Shores. She torpedos us to the ground --

What is family for anyways?

To pull and push and fall down;

To hold and help one another;

But I cannot

Help her.

I am not the pills in her translucent throat

Or the happiness she is forced to feel

From the prescription sugar pills.

I am a mother's sister's daughter

Am I allowed to wonder whether with

All these substances

Has only now

She become substance free.

I study her doll body

Mixed in waves of emerald seas,

The drugs combined

She has resigned.

Not just now but all the time.

I pull her up and off the ground,

qShut the shades and lay her down.

My hand runs through her hair, unwound.

I float away and dim the light,

I hear a tremor of goodnight.