The photographs were yellow where death is a bidden slow form splitting cells though the day
is tremor, open, a red tanager

seen on the way to the hospital like in the foreign thriller
the Burmese monk (the spirit? the unaccountable? what doesn’t “fit in?”)

draped in scarlet and seen
once, twice, before slipping back into the forest—

I walk inside my body’s healthy maze, all my heroines spent and exhausted,
all your masters assholes by now,

between existence and non
the humiliation of a hospital gown, the same wide shoulders

as when we first met and I could hold you and not be defined
by the whole questoin of I, angry and afraid, a thin, tired radiance—

The ghosts of erotica wanting to know could they still
get a rise out of us

but we were just a space some others had their eyes on,
out breath, our fumes—

A part of me was putting personal belongings in a plastic bag,
a part of me was pressing against space,

the Fates in the corner hiking their skirts
as I helped you from the bed, a faint, colorless laugh.