Xylometazoline Hydrochloride

The effects kick in
and I feel like a werewolf
losing the moon.
It stings
and I dig my claws into the bedsheets
as I suffer the throes of transformation.
My snout wrinkles and
shrinks,
my eyes unglaze
and colour slowly bleeds
back into my vision.
I no longer smell blood
just sweat; and
I throw open the window
to take lungfuls of air,
breathing out fur and
bristly hair,
coughing it up,
evacuating my body,
scrubbing it
until I am almost clean.
I breathe a sigh of relief,
shivering with fatigue;
I breathe
until the sun goes down,
trailing away as quickly as a ball kicked
by one goalkeeper to another,
and I back away from the window,
fingernails curling into talons.
I stumble into the kitchen.
Through the open window,
the moon glares at me,
one eye seeing through me
and cutting me in two.
I search for my medication
my Xylometazoline Hydrochloride
with its three different types of sodium,
phosphate, acid phosphate and chloride,
disodium edetate and benzalkonium;
I ransack the medicine cupboard
I pull knives out of drawers
I turn over pots and pans.
My eyes aflame,
I listen
to the clicking of my bones,
the agony of this mutation;
again the smell of blood
and I am gasping through my mouth,
nostrils flaring, nose bleeding
as it becomes something more feral.
I hear myself growl
and snort
and
I prepare
for another sleepless night.