"Faith Healing"

At nine years old, I learned to heal invisible wounds.
There wasn’t much, granted-
expired Band-Aids and Post-Its,

spare sticks of gum I knew
better to swallow. I couldn’t stomach much.

The fifth shelf in the left corner
held 52 bottles,
lortab, methadone, codeine,
the Sistine Chapel of prescription medication -
I arranged empty bottles like bowling pins

sent their hollow promises across the floor-- My work,

an ancient request, to heal the imperceptibly ill -
The ancestry of a doctor’s office: diasporic
sorcerous, tribal surgeons trained to see
the grief in you before its voice finds your hands -
they skinned their brother's pain,
took it into their own bodies. My
work is no crazier than the mother who
draws chalk outlines around a son still living,

Welcome, Bobby, I say, with the happy guitar and
invisible voices and earnest hands that shake even when
they’re not supposed to. I prefer you like this,

with a crooked smile and a heart too large

to handle saying goodbye, to anything.

I whisper extra hard into your bag

this time, will magic to touch every tablet. That was how
you healed a broken boy. This is how medicine
becomes miracle.

Bobby died, like all men do,

and the chants and the prayers and the
wishing, the held breath

leaked red, the same shade in his eyes
when they found him.

The pharmacy wasn’t a haven by any means
but if I had more time,
time to cast a stronger spell,
I know one of them would stick.