crunching on the red leaves
your scarf slowly uncoiling like a cozy snake
from that place where your hair gradually turns into bare flesh.
i pick up the red knit wool, and run after you
into the first night of fall.

diagnosis is an ugly word.
it sounds cold and curvy, like a moldy metal straw.
my mom cried that day, when the doctors said "i'm sorry" and maybe they were sorry, but not as much as me.
can you picture it?
a cold hospital chair, the room smelling of hand sanitizer.
everything seemed so big, then.
gloved hands, the faces attached to them looking concerned, my mom looking more than concerned, and I felt like I was drowning in diagrams and technical-talk, and the hand sanitizer smell was washing over my nose in waves, and the doctors were telling me I would be deaf - can you imagine how I felt?
they say there are five stages of grief, but I think it's like a color spectrum, like red and orange and yellow blending and blending together.
they told me a big word, and they said here, this is what is wrong with you, and I was scared like I had never been before, a creeping stagnant fear, and maybe that is why hospitals make me a little anxious now, and maybe that is why my ears feel delicate and sensitive and I am a little bit scared if what secrets they are hiding.
it really is an ugly word.
huh.

when I was younger I was mildly afraid of my own ears.
they seemed to sensitive, too prone to error,
i preferred not to think about them.
I remember the row of booths at the children's hospital.
come on inside, they said.
let's pretend you're perfectly a-ok.
the wires they stuck in my ears hurt.
they hurt like taking out a splinter that's mildly embedded in you, all rough edges and cold plastic.
needless to say, I was not a-ok.

have you ever touched the stars?
have you ever brushed them aside like grains of salt spilled on a dark tablecloth?
tell me, did they stick to the back of your hand?

wires emerge from the depths of her ears,
an umbilical cord,
keeping her fed and full.
constant stimulus her only recourse
her brain bleached by waves of input
like water through a sieve
(ah, which book was that again?)

write about the grit between your bones
write about the alphabet soup you found in your *****
the words spelling out “I love you”
tell me about how she broke your heart with a flower
tell me about falling in love with a ****
peering through the sidewalk.
I don’t mind
I don’t even brain
After all, darling
I love you