remember your limp cat after surgery
eyes caked in mammalian sleep
woozy around the house
resentful but too sore and tired to
hiss at you under the steam of medication
her soft paws, her uncontrolled
streams drooling around useless fangs
uncomfortable, as always, meeting your eyes
and this must be, you thought,
this must be
an alien abduction
and something of infant extraction and surgery
Fishing line through your tear ducts
your ripe fruit swollen face and eyes
peaches and grapes before you were weaned
Pricked through you
you blossomed to cough up chunks of wisdom teeth
****** sleep paralysis flinging insects up your nose
to infect your skin with itch
in this bed where they laid me down and lied to me
that i was my own, leading myself to The Land of Get Better
when even a spayed cat could tell you in words
as clear as those of an assault survivor or an invalid
you are not your own
a claim is laid to the body by the first hand that peels it open
cracks the ribs and gauges the ripeness of swelled organs
feathering fingers out over the veins
a hammer and chisel to the jaw and now you’re
introducing the self you used to be
gnawing around mandarin to a room of ghosts
yes this must be
this must be
an alien abduction