& after the first course, your corsage flatlines Beautiful convulsions Then, it sprouts wings, thorns, claws its way up
your arm to swallow you goosebump by goosebump There is a moment when resurrection betrays even the most devout
heart, devours it So blue, the ink pen veins blown up behind my eyes, I'm beaten Me, the patron saint of stifling anger over the ice
in my highball when I really did mean rocks Patron saint of politely melting into this tomato soup a spoonful at a time,
my littlest selves disappearing into my pool, divers, not a drop out of place This is that moment when you open the fridge door
to scavenge for leftovers but all you get is bass, when the bleeding eventually becomes unseemly— once a constellation, little
red stars, now just a saturated sky & we speak in fortune cookie all night Our eyes erratic behind their lids, legs trashing under
the covers, a face smothered in pillow The next dish, a ventilator An IV dripping into something already dead I order
two specials to make the pain remind you of someone, ask them to sign that knife wound today Rivulet of the body, your tongue
wriggles out from the baby's breath to respond were we ever anything more than echolocation My cellophane skin running all over the table runner Are we ever not living in the blast radius of someone else's internal organs Underneath the table, I'm
scooping my kidneys, liver, lungs, back into my chesthole How to keep you watered, alive, an ear, all that's left leaning
into the nearest sun beam It's a different moment, fingers sutured into stomach, puddling on my way to the restroom My mind's tail,
trail of dust & flame Me, patron saint of the meteor that falls from the sky, easily forgotten, eventually extinguished