"disease index"
Late-night breathing and influenza rasps –
your lungs are undependable.
They are porous; they leak soggy air like your
heart seeps stray affection.
Sometimes when I am punch-drunk and head-sweet I
imagine having designs
on your little thumper;
but it bumpers and stutters and stops
arrhythmic far too much.
After a fright, a pretty girl:
palpitate.
…I should not love so fickle an object.
Nor your clever brain-pan
or any tidy expanse of skin;
they are unreliable narrators, they
do not tell the story.
They do not show the true decline.
Instead –
I will invest in your liver;
so I can see the slow yellowing of your face
(of your pale eyes)
as our experiment ends.
- girlambrose
