Zarxio: Injection
Most of what I feel is my imagination.
Marrow thin as a minnow, tired as winter.
The wild blue of neutrophils
dwindling like a stand of harebell
in a frosted-over field. My veins are ferrous
and inhospitable. A motley coagulation of cells
refuses to carry oxygen up these hills.
Nosebleeds, nightly, bead on my upper lip
like a line of rubies. I imagine me magnificent, bejeweled.
The needle itself is nothing—thin, refrigerated.
The nurse presses a bandage to the wound, barely there.
I blush like a debutante—rose on the cheek, the chest,
the left breast that looks like worry. But mostly,
it’s bone ache that comes. The body I’m afraid to be
alone with. The naïve bone that makes itself better
so it can be broken down. Ribs turn violet,
violent, a heat that holds me. The sacrum beats
its elegant white heart through the night.
Right distal radius, right tibia—old hurts return, sharpen.
How does one body remember so much?
