You are some powerful medicine. The doctor gives the patient a prescription for nothing, really, and two days later, improvement. A miracle really. Nothing else has worked. This stuff is great.
“I shall please.” If the pill is the right color and the doctor seems caring enough, the hospital seems professional and trustworthy, and the patient believes, a lot of healing can be done without medicine at all. Pain dissolves, blood pressures come down, anxiety lifts and the world seems friendly again.
And the science shows it’s not simply a patient’s perception, but that actual physical changes occur. Tumors shrink. Blood changes.
Somehow, you are there all along. Somewhere, in between some neural pathway or tucked between this lobe and that lobe, you wait for the smallest of coaxings, the gentlest of callings. You must know how badly we need the relief, the hope. You unfurl like a vine, reaching out to nerve, curling around a vein, growing across a muscle. You sing a song like “Trust in Me” and we do. We relax into you. We feel you. You know us.
I wish I could call you out, not just for the pain in my back or my asthma. I have some memories I’d like you to heal. I would like to be better at math. I cannot for the life of me remember when to use “bring” and when to use “take” and I consider that something of an illness, given I teach writing for a living. Heal that. I would like you to come heal my distrust of bridges and restore my faith in the democratic process. I know you’re in there. Move me.
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