A boy thinks himself a coward

for relying on the winding black script on an off-white slip and the grey pills in a bottle to be normal.

In his room, the walls seem to lean in on him like crooked bones.

He burrows into his bed, holds the bottle near to his ear and shakes again and again.

The pills rattle around like dull, grinning teeth and he thinks if he could crack open his skull

and pick the black stains out of his brain,

maybe then he could be brave.

Sitting amongst the white walls, he could not see the courage in the clink clink of his orange bottle,

in the pool of tears that welled in the rim of his red eyes, or in the dull thud in his chest,

pushing purplish-blue blood through evergreen veins to spark a mosaic of electrical impulses,

yes, even in taking those pills, two a day after meal.

Sitting amongst the white walls, he could not see that maybe just surviving was brave.