S n o w e d - I n

                                 for Ivan Illich

There is nothing left.

I hold myself like an empty goldfish bowl.

 

Today I took my teeth to the dentist,

my body to the doctor.

I took my mind to school,

like an angry child,

sat it down.

 

I took my pain to the drug store,

my sex, throbbing and subsiding,

like a wound,

to my lover.

 

There is nothing left.

 

My body flies apart from no center.

It flaps like vines loose on buildings.

I try to tie it together,

to bring it all to one place that I dream of

like the ocean I smell one hundred miles inland.

 

But I wait for my bills,

x-ray results,

pap smear returns, to tell me how

I am.

 

If I am

well enough

to go out with my friends

and drink until I think it is snowing,

snowing so hard I can’t leave,

like when I was six

and so small

and not

a bunch

of crazy vines.

​

Copyright 2018  Rachel A Levine