Let me tell you of the week I grew up.

No, not physically but mentally and emotionally.

The physical age does not matter;

what matters is that the week before I loved candy.

The week and every week after,

it tasted too much like medicine.

What happened to make me dislike candy so?

Easy, I was given enough medicine

that all I knew was chemicals

and overly sweet flavours colouring my little veins.

As they say, too much of anything is a bad thing.

Even help.

I was in a hospital that smelled as hospitals do,

of cleanliness and death.

This one though,

it also smelt of candy.

I remember my parents signing

me in for an inpatient stay

I do not remeber

them signing me out.

They were going to fix my nerve pain.

I will say they tried,

as I remember days upon days of illness

and pain like non I had felt before.

The medicine made the floors a lake that would swallow me whole,

showers were the maws of great beasts filled with slime,

gardens bloomed with searing spikes of pain,

and family members were never real.

A week later they sent me home with new pain.

A week later they sent me home with new struggles,

A week later they sent me home all grown up.