You won't be cured.
- joneworlds@mailbox.org

Some  of us  still keep  coming to  those basement
dens they  set up in  the early days of  all this.
Remedy Centers.  To get the stuff the Health Board
used to say'd  ward off the turning,  or slow down
what you got.  Was it  true?  I couldn't never say
one way or the other. But  I tell you one thing: I
can  make  up  with  consistency what  I  lack  in
certainty.

And so I'm  setting in there once  again the other
night,  in one  of those  basements on  them dirty
resin  benches. Yellow  buzz of  fluorescent tubes
trying  to push  the dark  wet cold  back out  the
window slits facing the sidewalk.

The attendant  in scrubs  finally comes  over with
her tray  of dixie cups full  of that bisglycinate
tea, and the iodine  patches, and the clotrimazole
syringes.   And   I  take  my  doses,   take  them
gratefully.   And then  she leans  to me  and says
something I still can't understand.  Looks me dead
in the eye, and says it real clear, but quiet:

You won't be cured.

Why the fuck would she  say that to us?  What does
she stand to gain by  it?  Saying what we all here
know deep  down, but come here  anyways to forget.
We come to feel some hope, to have some agency, to
have some tiny bit of control in these waning days
of  everything.  Does  she think  she blesses  us,
with her honesty and her knowledge?

I bundle  up all my  despair and my fear,  wrap it
tight in anger  so I can't see it no  more.  And I
want to beat  someone with it.  I sit  quiet for a
few minutes,  and the feeling passes.   And then I
start to feel ashamed  of myself.  She didn't mean
nothing by it.

I  take my  tea.   It feels  so  good going  down.
Tastes like blood, but it's  hot and it sparks and
tingles, like  I'm being repaired.  And  I breathe
into that.  No one can  take that feeling from me.
That'll always be mine.