Homemade Medicine

time face terror
and blow it off

and I once knew a girl
who crushed aspirin
with water bottles,
sliced lemons and added
salt from the mountains in pink
(purer and fresher,
than sea-salt,
she said),
ground up mint leaves
made soft
with a mortar-press.

she'd feed it to me
drip
by generous dribble
like a nurse with a gerbil
or a sick rabbit
while time by time
I died in bed
of time
faced terror
hardly asleep.

then
she'd make
up her own
bottle
with the same ingredients
and stay indoors
to survive
forever,
avoiding the morning sky,

while I,
gone strong
by her infusions,
went out,
killed spiders,
spat at the sun,
and walked
until my steps cracked the pavements
and birds
clattered away.