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
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 11:27 PM UTC
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
I wrote an iteration of this in November 2012; I've kept it largely the same with minor edits and revisions. Imagery rooted in a recurring dream I had all that Summer and again that Fall as well.
