limbs go pale, & face flushes
so hollow he takes one look and
asks if I’d been crying

no, I hadn’t, but things come
with a terrifying clarity
during infirmity,

(I am just trying to be dramatic of course)
suddenly all I can stomach is
white rice / citrus fruits

My insides are hot and erratically
expanding, it’s a marvel how
my skin holds it all together, I am
both sweating and shivering so
double the power to me, I
line my eyes with cough syrup
hoping to bootleg some of this deviation into tomorrow

Months spent reading Milton
only spawned a mild interest in Sin,
Serpent-hellhound-woman
whose trauma only bore death
and even then didn’t she want to be
more than an allegory?

I once asked the world for the clarity of disaster
and all it bestowed was a fever.

Call me a malady.
Call me a weapon.
Call me the turbulence
of a battleship in the nighttime.

I stay away from the people I’d like to embrace but least want to infect
but I would be offended if I was never anybody’s primary affliction.