Shanna Germain My Dad Says Yes to the Drugs Between trips carrying live honeybees from Mass. to Mich., my dad's driving arm goes quiet as his CB radio on a 2 a.m. run. The rest of him humming like honeybees caught in the wipers. The docs say too much, too many, these hidden sacs of sweet high, cargo holds on overload, spilling their honey in the roadways of his veins. From the outside, he looks like he's always looked. Maybe grayer. But not as gray as the pills, little lint balls plucked from the prescription of shortened futures. Stethoscope to his eyes, tongue depressed by double high-beams and there is his son to consider. Hey, hey, good buddy. Only after the needle. Before that, there is his time-salted beard shaking over the blue plate of his gown, my reach for his quiet hand, his voice sending breaker, breaker over the still, dead air.

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