I like the dirty world after the holidays.
When the new year winter is grime/filth, I like to get off on the melancholia. Here, I spot the leftover signs of a magic season now gone. In the parking lot of the pharmacy, I see a battered fake wreath tapping against a light pole; it gives of a clinky metallic cadence/ twap-twap-twap; any good gust could rip it free.
A red ribbon attached to the green part reads Ho Ho Ho as sparse snowflakes move from left to right across my plain of vision.
Everything here is danky sad.
Each taxing breath I take is a hair wall towering over this garden of bronchitis. In my right hand I’ve got my fresh bag of drugs. Little kids exit the doors behind me with their parents. There’s a doctors office in there, too, and everybody’s sick now. Everybody’s sick after Christmas. Everyone’s spent holiday body is trying to kill them.
The lot is full of cars. Patients, I imagine. Or some are probably the cars of the doctors or nurses or people who look at the orders for the pills and the creams and the syrups, put them into their containers so people can pay their money and split. I’m in my car, engine running now, my drugs on the passenger seat. I sip from my travel mug and the coffee is long cold. It was from 5am. It’s been hours since I dropped a kid off at school. I’ve been to Urgent Care. Now I’m here, to get my dope.
I see a kid in his mom’s arms coming out of the building.
I see him speaking words and she is smiling and messing with her key fob to unlock the car somewhere out in front of them. His clothes are nice and so are hers and so I peg them for well off. He has a floppy ear fur hat and a kind tired little face. I tell myself he’s been ill. He’s been ill with a pukey virus and the doctor just took care of him and his mom is all happy that he ought to be getting better now. At least that’s what the doctor told her as he sent in the prescriptions, scooted his chair back slowly/ deliberately/ a confident man with a serious job/ and smiled warmly, if a bit rehearsed, at the lady and the child as he took leave to go to the next room/ the next kid throwing up bile/ or the next kid sneezing his face off.