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.