Hips and depression don’t go together.

Used too much or too little. Either way

the body compulses until materiality

dissipates. My fleshy corporea hides a thing,

brittle, like newspaper, carbonized,

though it works harder than any

laboring hand or industrial composition.

“I think it wants to kill me” or at least,

to cauterize my humanity. Metaphor may

make sense of my body when it is absent

and present.

When I am a liminal, though, language

drags through my body like a chain of knives

and I fear that my mouth will reveal blood.

Now, now that my hips are back, I can

craft a bed to love in, make words to sleep

and breathe in.