Everyone Loves Me

and wants me to get better.

I read a peer review article and then a tarot spreadon resilience and rigidity

I practice acceptance for all parts of myselfby vomiting on a therapist’s expensive carpet

I take a fistful of meds at night and againin the morning. I cough up red phlegm

and in the clot is a better version of meRaw and Fresh and Shiny

And my friends pet her headwhile I watch from my tower.

I become healed by owningnothing, owing nobody. I free bone

from its codependence to cartilage.My insides are chlorine clean.

I sleep to White Noise for Dogsand dream that the hand hovering

above my mange will decide sick dogsdeserve skin-to-skin too, even the ones who aren’t

doing the work. I am sickof dragging myself outside

to be grateful and smell the oncoming springand piss but my dying inside

would make everyone uncomfortable andEveryone loves me, just

no one wants to stroke my patchy bodyand let me eat chocolate,

love me like a farmer loves a lame animal—

out back, through a silencer.