Now
You are a free oxygen radical,
you set the chain reaction
and there are more of you than I can
detoxify.

Then
I breathed you in-
-voluntarily;
you were always there,
at the end of the electron transport chain,
you broke apart
to accommodate my capricious protons
and you changed state;
for me.

Now
I am in oxidative
s
            t
 r
            e
  s
             s
as you are colliding
your way through my melanocytes -

and my skin is draining white
and my eyes are burning red.