Always read the label

You get meth­od­ical. Get your­self a meth­od­o­logy. Packet open. Always read the label. Strip pulled from packet. Read the label again, just to double check. Try and remem­ber. How did you used to do this? You know? Before? The label will say, the label will tell you, the label will keep you coldly informed. So read.

Oh, a moment. A fleet­ing remem­brance. It’s com­ing back. Will there be any side effects? Not that you recall, because this one was at least bet­ter than the other one. Sud­denly you want to call a fel­low suf­ferer, a fel­low swal­lower, out of the blue, so that you can shoot the breeze about symp­toms or sweats, surges or sick­ness, just to put off the dread­ful deed for one unmed­ic­ated minute more.

Read the label, because those object­ive phrases of medi­cinal ter­min­o­logy will reas­sure you. Odd little whites, isol­ated against cor­rup­tion and infec­tion by a peel­ing metal­lic skin. Push against the plastic to release the foil and then, damn, a cut to the fin­ger­tip. How can such a harm­less shiny mater­ial sting so deeply, draw­ing blood? Pull your­self together. It’s noth­ing more than a dot, a spot, a scratch. Shake your hand and clench your fist. Clench and unclench, bent fin­gers dig­ging into palm. Not now, please. Don’t inter­rupt this pro­cess. Don’t dis­turb this ritu­al­istic tea cere­mony of toxins.

Tip of the tongue. Here it is, at last, sat on the tip of the tongue. A brief gulp of almost inde­cision, a gulp down­wards, a sooth­ing gulp of cold water. Prom­ise it will be more tran­quil, if not entirely tran­quil­ised? Prom­ise it will numb, even if it can never com­pletely deaden? Prom­ise it will just make everything better?

Not everything, no. You know that’s unreal­istic. Only some things. Even one thing. One thing will do. One thing will suf­fice for now. Could you and your odd little whites come to some kind of agree­ment, loc­ated mid­way between remark­able pan­acea and simple crutch?

You turn the packet over in your hand as your blood­stream pulses a long lost wel­come. Read the label one more time, then sit and wait for the prom­ise con­tained within its emo­tion­less words to take effect.