<li>A white cotton ball taken from a pill bottle</li>
<li>The too-sweet taste of white peach flavored Calpico</li>
</ul>
<h2id="exercise-2">Exercise 2</h2>
<divclass="verse">White cotton,
taken from a pill bottle,
rests beside too-sweet drinks.</div>
<h2id="exercise-3">Exercise 3</h2>
<p>A table set for two, plates already empty with silverware straddling the rims, napkins crumpled and resting beside them, and there, in the middle, the white cotton packing from a pill bottle sat beside the remnants of two too-sweet drinks. I didn’t even need to smell or taste them to know that. The neon-yellow of what must have been a lemon drop or sidecar was enough to make my chest ache from the thought of so much sugar.</p>
<p>That cotton, though, that took a bit more work to suss out. It wasn’t a simple cotton ball, which maybe would have given the dinner’s participants some other, simpler explanation. Makeup removal? Fingernail polish?</p>
<p>But no, this hank of cotton was long, flat, slender. It had been folded in half before being stuffed into whatever bottle — handily missing from the scene — and removed any doubt as to its provenance. </p>
<p>The room was empty. Only I stood there, hovering before the table, hands stuffed deep in my pockets, as I tried to reconstruct the evening. No detective, I, but the tableau invited attempts at explanation: too drinks, far too sweet or far to strong, and a missing bottle of pills. Were the drinks strong enough to cover the taste of pills, ground up and stirred in? Or were they simply meant to wash them down? Were the pills taken willingly or not?</p>
