Ficus

I split three pills with my ficus and now

it’s being weird. It won’t drink my breath or eat

the sun or fight off

the spider and his wife, whom I also

split three pills with,

because it’s Christmas, because

I was sad driving past

the shuttered stationery shop and the woman

dragging her kid on a leash.

I split three pills with the woman

and three pills with the kid. I measured my heart rate

and pronounced myself legally dead. My ficus

gave me three pills. I felt better. I told

a bath towel, and my friend’s bulldog,

and the dregs at the bottom

of my tea. I told the three pills in my pocket

and the three pills

in my bed. Each one

a loose pearl

ready to string together

in my belly, in the bellies of people I loved

or thought of when I watched a pigeon

disappear inside a hawk.