morphine

It started, the morphine, as a warm pinch of nerve ending pleasure at the bend of the arm, where the skin is softest and the needle taped down there was the smallest they made and still almost too wide to trust inside butterfly veins. It spread from there like ink through the blood stream. It was slow and warm and at some spots felt rough like salt crystals scraping gently against tender insides.  The pain, through glassed eyes, is visible, climbing onto tangible clouds of pink and green, floating upward towards the dust-ceiling and disappearing there, leaving water-spots on the tiles like rainbow oil slicks. Once it was gone there was just the honey-sea and the music box melody of steadily beeping and buzzing machines – an orchestra of lifelines.