I was slipping a pink shirt down my arms in the change room when it happened. My back started to slowly heat, like milk in a pan, only it went past boil and started to char into a burnt milk of a back and I could smell the hardened and congealed smell of myself as I hung the shirt back onto its hanger. All the muscles seized and boiled over just as if someone had cranked the burner onto high, pushing me backwards into creaking red coils. I can change through this, I said. Kept tugging at the sleeves until the pain scorched through the lower back and into the legs and the breath became shallow as I tried to coordinate the undressing with globs of muscle and looked behind me for the chair, which I plopped into to catch some longer and deeper air. I saw my face in the mirror; I was breathing through a parted mouth. It wasn’t taking in much. I closed my eyes - the only thing left to see behind that change room door was a topless girl who might faint sideways from a chair full of rumpled clothes, and who would want to see that?
As I was paying for the shirt my hands started to clench. Punching in my pin number I grew rabid for pain medication. The counter was high; I had to stand with a straight back to reach it. The clerk yawned twice. I’m so tired. What? Tired. I’m so tired. Oh. Told myself I should be saying something about the length of a shift. When people get off. Make conversation as the machine processed my account. Didn’t say anything. I’m good at keeping quiet in this pain. How does that work? If I faint no one will know why. No I don’t want a bag; I’ll stuff this in mine. Jammed it in there over a pile of loose receipts. Tried to figure out if the clerk was someone I once knew but with different hair. Didn't you used to dance like a bird in a puddle?
At the pharmacy I marched to the pain isle. It was crowded with old folks hovering around the muscle relaxants like bent kites collapsing into needled branches. This makes sense. Old people pushing into the red boxes of painkillers, sounding out eye-beau-pro-fin as I die. You’d think they would have been there enough times to know which is which. Move. You're chained there, step aside. You’d think they’d know the names and what they do. Life’s journey: from penny candy to pain isle. The body is waiting: sour peach fuzz scrapping the tongue or intensive care. Lets get a move on. Pick one. I grabbed three boxes and went up to the pharmacy counter, held the boxes in cupped palms as if I was trying to catch water from a dripping pipe on a hot day in the middle of nowhere. The pharmacist was much taller than me. There was a delay each time she spoke - I think she saw something in my face. Like I was anchoring there, rusted metal settling on the bottom between the soaked and shifting grains. Like I could drag through this conversation and she had pills to divide in the back. Which one of these, I said, which one of these is best for back pain, for sudden back pain? Oh Good. So this one won’t make me tired then? Oh good. Oh good. OK, thank you.
At home laid up with busted heat under white wool. The worn wine stain and your number on my phone. Apparently, acute muscle pain can suddenly onset due to extreme tension and stress or an electrolyte imbalance – not enough potassium, etc. The things we forget.