you touched your wrists
to mine
and a rash blossomed
across my skin
red and dry
ran across
indigo hills
fields of turned-over soil
in the night-time
to cool my
strangled sweat
to find a sink
a light in the kitchen.
im sorry, i promise
i'll buy a slice
i just need to use your sink, please.
fluorescent-white
heat
i put the water on the hottest setting
and i scrub and
scrub, and scrub
fast, and hard
i rinse the raw
i leave.
when I wake up
for all my scrubbing
the rippling rash, the buds
are still there
under my skin.
a lone fungal stalk
of crimson
a fruiting body
rises from my wrist.
this does not belong
here
like a broken bone
bending in the wrong direction
under the skin
like the voice on
the other end of the line
this is not real