Reports

On crystal meth, pond snails are better,tests prove, at remembering pokesfrom a sharp stick. In Afghanistansome parents use opium to settletheir children. And there are those who boardeach desire as if it were a planescheduled for an exotic location;for instance, the woman on heroinin a nearby town who, needinga companion, began injectingher twelve-year-old daughter while the neighborbartered more drugs for her preteen body.

A counselor claims the girl, fourteen now,is healing, observation’s evidencetallied in a fat, confidential file.Incredible, we say, reading the reports,thinking the cringing snails must believethey are subjects of the god of stabs,that one country’s children are at peace.But yesterday I drove past that mother’s house,slowing to turn and pass a second time,looking for the terrible accidentof that child. I might as well have shotheroin, too, in mime, descendinginto a few hours of virtual hell.

And this morning? A report, with photo,on the mother’s once striking beauty,a sidebar on how the daughter, each day,visits her in prison. The news that snailshave been turned into tiny batteriesthat can be recharged with food and rest.And furthermore, American children,studies show, are eating more batteries,yet nothing makes me learn the howof these, the when and where, the why.