I keep my old pill bottles.
not because I plan to reuse them,
or fill them with extra beads,
stray sewing needles
random coins,
a travel pack of Q-tips,
or tiny paint tubes that I might use to somehow make my mental illnesses art.
I keep my old pill bottles because they are me.
I keep my old pill bottles because they are one month of me.
they are not me because they have my name,
address,
medicine,
doctor,
pill quantity,
pharmacy,
Rx number printed on them in ******* ink.
they are me because they held the chemicals my body could not dream of creating.
What they hold is not beautiful. it is not deep.
it is a second leg you have to re-stitch every day because your body didn't know how to grow one.
Those bottles hold the pills that make me, me.
I feel because of them,
I sleep because of them,
I live because of them.
Before them, I was not human.
I was a body with partial instructions.
Every Month I have to get another extension of myself from the local CVS.
Every month I put an empty bottle in the box on my nightstand because that bottle held what I was last month.

it's strange looking at a small white pill knowing that someday this month, that pill will be the reason you react to something important the way you did or the one you forget to take causing a break down in your English class.

It's strange how I can be manufactured so easily.