It is, to start, a pair of ragged claws.
It drags itself along the walls of veins and fascia and feeds,
pinches itself a home it has no right to.
The thing sprouts needles, feeds and feeds.
Its needless gut produces nothing;
everything goes for more needles, more intention.
Body as table, as banquet, as ether.
Body as dream. The thing is an abacus of infinite beads, scorecard, scales
counting nothing—map of absence as it unravels.
“I tell the cells they need me, or they’ll die. I think
that’s why they let me go so long.” The thing wants its own life.
The thing wants Nothing, which is also More. So it takes.
“The chemo’s not so bad,” you claimed, “They’ve figured out
what drugs to give so you’re not so sick.”
I would not step between your words and you.
–
Devon Miller-Duggan’s books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas, 2008), Alphabet Year (Slant, 2017), and Slow Salute (Lithic Press, 2018). She lives in Delaware, which, once the oceans rise, will probably be the smallest state since it has more below-sea-level land than Rhode Island. She has recently taken up embroidery after an inexplicable three-decade hiatus and is trying to figure out how to be an Abstract Expressionist embroiderer.