You are the wheat, you are the marrow. You are wholesome and life-giving, where the disease takes hold and lays waste. You are dizzy like a wildfire, cut loose and vengeful. You have arson on your mind and crime on your bloodied lips. You speak in a contrived directness which is apparently an act. People find you sick when they love you. I wear socks around you and I am callous. You invoke the terror, beget the night sweats. I grow my teeth for you and clamp down on the nearest artery I can find. You think about French ideas and German systems. You meditate without much meaning. I don’t recognize your face when I see it. Yours is a disembodied voice which haunts me all the way to my echo chamber so that I may never be free from the resonance of it.