Not on my watch

 

December 23^rd, your text sidles up,

Sinky, Have you any spare Diazepam, Mirtazapine?

We both know the drugs meant to take the edge off

Christmas day custodial sentence where your life runtishly

contrasts a family fecund with careers and kids.

I do have emergency reserve such meds,

want to gift you few hours bliss, escapism, numbness.

 

But though you are 30s now, I shudder at peddling drugs to an ex-pupil.

Suspicion too that you might have spent months saving stash up

like a Christmas club for one last bender or

cadged from shady mates miscellaneous meds,

whose careless compound would seism-shake your little body.

Then I flash-forward: your mother’s watercolour beauty blurred,

myself tortured with harpy guilt by insistent inquest How did she get them?

 

I write erase, write erase, write erase,

sweltering at image you mentally pacing for my response.

Settle for a half-truth Sorry but my bloody GP keeps me short.

Open your return text with a wince, as you boast can throw words

like acid in a face. But , Same here, bastards, not to worry,

I exhale; we are complicit now in our dislike of med-mean DRS,

and have avoided any credit-often-offends awkwardness.

Fiona Sinclair

If you have any comments on this poem, Fiona Sinclair  would be pleased to hear from you.