Close your eyes. Count to three. Breathe deeply. An old ceramic pot, darkened with heat and age, simmers on the flame. Inside; cracked black pepper, crushed garlic, honey, lime juice, dried mango. Deeper in, past the oily surface; chicken, cayenne, salt, tomatillos and peppers blended to liquid, allspice, benzyl alcohol, seedlip alcohol, glyceryl monostearate, Polysorbate 60, propylene glycol dicaprylate, trolamine, white petrolatum, and the active ingredient: butenafine hydrochloride. This soup is honey garlic chicken and Lotrimin Ultra. It is the soup for the day, in a literal sense. It is what you feed your body today. Because you are hungry, and because you have horrible ringworm and don't wash your sheets. Later on, you'll add fresh air to the pot- and music. Pour in the the sight of rain, it's touch against your skin. Grind yourself against a micro plane. Sing something. Season your pot with yourself. Your whole life is concoction, and alchemy. When you walk down the aisles for your cream, for your pills, for the shoe inserts to make you stand straight, for water, for chocolate; you are the chemist. There is science in the tubes. But not in you. This is the experience of Walgreens.
