What if I did not know my shadowed self
was yet alive? I would sit crow-backed
on a milking stool beside the antique
bedside table piled with rickety towers
of unimbibed books. I would whisper-shout
whisker-close like a gunshot’s silencer, “I am
begging you to pump those lung-bellows.”
Or I would lull a dove’s feather in the dip
of my philtrum. Wait. Watch its barometer
rise, waft to its hat stand by the exit door
Or fall a floret’s final inhale, before bones melt
crematoria’s wax. If there was a puppet string
glued to my big toe, I could caterpillar-sidle
from bedbugs. Basal half-mast in millimetre
increments to pine floorboards. Instead, it feels
like a mortuary toe-tag in a cold cabinet
wherein my turgid bladder would let go
of its orange juice, as orifices are stuffed
with cotton wool and no calling cards
Flatlined ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ــ___
