‘Medicament’

By Patrick Chapman

​

The clear blue bottle
on the bathroom shelf

is a bullshit Mercury
capsule splashed down

empty as a cloud of
cotton wool. I shake it

silent, drop it in the basket,
go downstairs.

I pour black coffee, lie
on the couch. She is there

again, the pachyderm, squat
on my beanbag,

threatening to burst it
but it holds.

She blinks slowly like a
New York librarian

expecting Nazis. The living
room smells of woodchipper

dust. I sip my mediocre
coffee and enquire,

what are you here for?
She doesn’t answer

but her trunk reaches
for my cup, grabs it.

She takes one sniff,
recoils,

then snaffles cup and all,
missing a tusk by an inch.

It is medicinal, I say;
your species doesn’t tend

to enjoy that sort of mud.
She shifts her weight.

The room lists to the right,
the beanbag rips a little

smile that vomits beads.
She pisses coffee into

the bag’s corduroy ribbing.
Why do you only show up,

I ask, after I run out
of antidepressants?

She smarts the way
my mother would

whenever I smiled at her.
Then, in a minor voice,
 

worn like old piano wire,
the pachyderm explains:

I come when you run out,
asshole,

because that is when you
tell the truth.