i.
i used to keep time with numbers. not the ones on the clock,
but numbers of my own invention. hours constructed from
bloody pillows and painkiller dreams; days counted—one, two,
three—until each emerged solidified from the cloying cloud
of cleaner-smell, dizzyingly sweet like rotted peaches dripping
through the cracks between ceiling tiles. i have started keeping time
like that again, inventing the methodical progression since the clock
slipped past me. i build sleep by stacking nightmare upon nightmare,
swallow until my stomach settles, force clots to form in the haze.
i feel ghosts prick at the crook of my arm. i feel ghosts well in my eyes’
corners. and the ghosts leak, tick-tocking, into the wrinkles of my brain.

xiii.
i turned sixteen crying yellow dye in a doctor’s chair, surrounded
by shriveled-victory presents: a body functioning on will and morphine
instead of organs and oxygen, a cocktail of life and illness,
misery preserved by the lab coats that decided i am worth saving.
i turned sixteen choking on promises of never again, kept them tucked
in the back of my throat until my twentieth year forced them up and out.
never again splattered on my bedsheets, tinged with reddish rage
and staining the blankets with fear. never again shattered against the wall,
in shards sharp as the knowledge that i am again shackled to the chair,
with the sleeves of lab coats peeking just around the corner.

xvii.
i left the hospital with the spokes of my wheelchair caught on
strained threads yanked from the starched white seams. but eventually
each one snapped. the confinement, the killer, the sickness stopped holding
onto me. the days emerged–april ninth, april tenth, april, may, and june,
the suddenly-shallower lungs only an unpleasant reminder on the steps
of the occasional staircase. i don’t think i will be that lucky this time,
to only have occasional reminders when i pass, like the places where
rows of arena seats turned into rows of beds. i feel this one ingraining
itself into my veins: a quicker heartbeat, a tenser throat, and a reminder.
you have been here before; you have survived; and you are not immune.