Baptism by Naltrexone
Julie Trilling

Here is a drug to replace your drug of choice.
Chaste white pill, chalky and oval.

Here is the user’s manual,
with warnings and disclaimers
and a 1-800 CDC hotline to report
adverse side effects not already listed.

At 1 am, the brain whirring begins.

Climb on this freight train
throttling down phantom tracks away from
the lightning and thunder and sleet
beating on the bedroom window,
the snow and ice casting alien light,
ghostly glow.

A mustached Bulgarian man tells me
to curl into a sweaty fetal ball and ride it out.
I smell the vodka on his breath and remember
the shining bottles of wine on my wall,
the tequila, whiskey, and gin on the basement bar shelves.
I will never touch him, or them, again.

My Bulgarian friend left when the nausea came,
damp blonde head hung over the white wicker wastebasket.

My feet grow into plump watermelons,
my fingers shrink into splintered toothpicks.

I was at the Vatican and tried to take confession
from an English-speaking Polish priest
but made the error of debating the confessor.

Fallen star, guilty glutton,
you will not remember this night.