Finally! She sits motionless to savour the moment exhaling slowly…relief, at last. The night was long waking up to hammers in her head. Finally by the end of the day, knockers slowly left, one by one.

She remembers reading that heroin users are often looking for that high…reaching nirvana. She read that there were many ways to reach this ultimate summit of pure bliss. She was a bit shocked when a monk listed orgasm on his list of “highs” but thinking about it now, that did make sense along with reaching spiritual enlightenment.

Demerol was another drug that brought some to nirvana after hours of labour in childbirth. Her grandmother was a midwife and many mothers would ask for a second “shot”…she smiles at the memory of her grandmother telling her birth stories.

It must be like this for people who use opiates for painkillers as well, she ponders. She always steered away from that because she knew how easily one gets addicted. Her doctor once prescribed a procedure that would relieve her of her neck pain for about one month. It was very costly but it was not the cost that turned her off. She lives with chronic pain day and night. For the past three decades it has married her by now. To separate the pain only briefly, might be a relief…even heaven but hell would surely await after the effects wore off. No, she thought, that would be worse. She preferred to endure the soft murmurs of her partner who drummed on joints and bones and off and on would invite his knockers for a poker game in her head and neck. But when that game ended, guests left one by one…the relief swaddled her…the other joints dulled in comparison to that last performance…a concert of sheer hell.

Right now, at this very moment, she is drunk with this relief she calls, her nirvana.

Steel drums echo

Beating to a steady rhythm

Repeating an angry verse

Robbing her of any comfort

In the name of pain

© Tournesol ‘19/09/06