Itch
Today I misspelled sacred as scared
and it made my stomach feel like a raw tooth socket,
possibly infected,
oozing something yellow and achy.
The true-or-false prophets
of the internet would tell me I’m dying
and I would believe them.
I live with an un-swallowed pill
stored below my tongue. In it
there is scribble and ink
and every word I’ve ever been afraid of.
Please God, or WebMD, whichever oracle
has the shorter waitlist,
tell me which herbs to crush and gulp down,
which syrups will sop up this fever.
Tell me the pirates grow frightened
of their gold, tell me they stare
at themselves in the eye of the emerald
and wonder about scarcity.
Teach me how to unravel
this itch to drain my pen of afterthoughts.
Teach me how to keep words
inside my head without wanting
to weave them
into chainmail.
Posted Mar 21, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC · edited
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