I. The Diagnosis
bleeding: wallets are lightly perfumed with aching stench first before
stringy red rivers race through veins. watch as we
learn to give it a name-- “irreparable isolation,
inaccessibility or outrage”. “swaying lines of hands and
half-uttered goodbyes.” press your face into the crying
mounds of people and my shuddering belief in something better. do you
see what I see?
II. The Plea
this world owes us the pulse that laces through his
gasping heart, the weight of crisscrossed sutures upon skin,
and hospitals that open their doors to her family. I want his
breath to keep rising in blossoms of pink clouds, not slump down
heavily into piles of taxes and despair. but they know better than us,
don't they? that no god promised healthcare as birthright for them, not
when little children’s fevers foam over white sheets and graves are
dug early because good health is just a bubble
waiting to be popped. prick, pop, pulpy plop; feel
the plummeting weight of another death as it bites into your heart.
pain speaks no language yet I hear it in their weeping, it only
asks, “let me leave them.”
III. The Inheritance
you ask me how I can love; how can I love? love when
breaths are measured by class. love when walls of skin are
punctured because of credit. love when we were carved from houses
that do not protect, I can take no vow that says I will protect you. today
my worth lies in how much more hurt my mother’s shaking hands
can hold. this love is calculated by hurt is calculated in dollars and difference,
flattened families and holes drilled through the floor of what is
enough. a little more is too much to ask. privilege is a
thrumming party of people dancing on glass floors,
never to look down.
IV. The Outsider
these scraping plastic chairs sit on the cusp of betraying my body; my body that houses
a beautiful boy and girl within its ribs. they shut their eyes together as
clipboards ask for my sex with binary queries. my doctor
is here, and if I know one thing, it is that his textbook
never taught him how to touch people like me
without flinching—or not shut down my
very real concerns,
“let’s look at your actual
health problems,
yes?”
V. The Final Transaction
rename my body, call it a ledger
rename my body, call it
rename my
rename
reclaim
reclaim my
reclaim my body.