I manage to forget -
Mostly.
There are sunny days where I luxuriate
in
the warm red color inside my eyelids,
mapping delicate capillaries as if they lead to my future.
I trace my upward trajectory with a twisted half-smile.
If there's irony in that smile,
it's because the edges of my vision
aren't meant to tilt away from me.
My head is only tangentially related to my spine:
a sweet, but too-eager kiss could decapitate me.
My smiles have never stood on steady ground.
But it's a sunny day,
so my sweat sticks my warm skin to a plastic lounge chair,
And yesterday -
banging on the coffin door as loam sifts down,
desperate coughs fighting adrenaline and soil to get to oxygen,
unable to see even the bloody ends of my fingers in the too-close darkness,
let me out let me out let me out! -
is just another half-repressed vision,
a scene from a story I thought about writing.
I tuck my broken nails inside a fist.
These sunny days are curtains I draw closed
around the mussed and crinkled sheets
of the hospital bed I clambered from -
Conceal it, hide it, call it by another name -
The nurses do not change the linens.
