The sweet disease

Image courtesy of CoffeeAndMilk/iStock

His lips on mine like algal blooms on

stagnant water spread me.

Our legs entwined as milfoil, bound

as we once were to the stop & go & go & go

until we thought we were gone.

Immune to thoughts of disease, the rush

of lust’s sweetness fuelled me.

I rose to his touch like the Sagrada Familia —

ever-expanding, unfinished cathedral —

my skin translucent as leaded panes, the

holy, holy, whole

I imagined embraceable. My immunity

is now fractured; highs and lows

of sugar siphon spontaneity.

Ebbing, my mind reels in undertow and

worry: will I die

in a car crash, will I injure others

with words spouted

at random, will anyone stay with me as I surf

this wave, forever? In endless routines

I claim my body’s rites: daily test strips,

calculated eating, and stake out its beauty.

Stained and glassed my tattooed cells

radiate a full house of hues.

Replicating their miscoded chain

in a roar of rearranged notes, they attack.

Some days I am shaky, beached,

untouchable. Other times I’m cresting

as I come ashore, as if the islets of Langerhans —

birthplace of insulin — were Hawaiian, full

of birdsong and their saving ichor,

which I must now inject

into this gyrating score, this chemistry

humming with flagrancy.