Apothecary

A store of ingredients to fix all ills, not only of body but of mind and soul. Related to the pharmacy ('pharmakon' = drug, Greek) but with an Alchemical bent. Mixture of ingredients based not only on their medical/scientific effects, but on the principles of sympathetic thought, transmutation and other obscure chains of reasoning.

Lovely stuff, long as you don't ingest it.

So, in my apothecary- which I keep more for curiosity and to satisfy my need to organize, label, collect- I have alum. Salt- sea salt, pink salt, black salt. Rattlesnake skin, deer teeth, black widow spiders. Peppers black, red, green- nutmeg and acacia, ginseng and ginger, rum, gold magnetic sand, egg shells and dirt dauber nests, Florida water, oil of rose, inks and assorted bottles that are still empty.

Feathers. Burnt matches. Orange peel. Jars of dirt from each state line, and a colonial era graveyard. Horse hair and juniper berries, holly still bright red, peach pits and marbles. Blue bottles, found pennies bitter copper and turning green. Lots of tiny empty bottles. Pebbles from every place I've ever lived. Sea glass, shells, bricks washed round. Wheat ears, cotton bolls, long dried okra pods, brilliant yellow sea whips. Bones and stones and curious things, that's what I am made of.