Death– how I keep coughing up more
of myself into you, drop a liver haphazardly
into your arms. I’ve begun to forget
this is an exchange– I hand you my body
for what? Another year closer to ghost?
I spent the last six months believing
in you, believed that if I prayed enough
you’d finally let me out of your cradle.
After the hospital: everything I drink
starts to taste like hand sanitizer, meaning
perhaps I am cleaning my hands towards
alive. Or, another bottled thought, acetonic
wish that eventually becomes decay.
Hospital visitors unravel their undefective
limbs, swinging them like a lottery prize.
My arms: rotating vials. The lottery prize:
a body not half dead. The first boy I loved
had river eyes and two kidneys, and hiding from
my own skeletal frame, I propelled myself towards
him. Love became a gamble of tongues, of bones
trading joints. I wanted to steal his lungs.
I hid under his healthy ribs. In my dreams
I have a whole body, but I am always still looking
for something. I suppose I will forever be fractional.
Yesterday a woman visited with a pastry box and
a mouthful of get wells, brought her children who later
named me shadow. I peeled off the top of the pie–
hesitant, waiting, ready to find something dead beneath the crust.