Oh mama
There are days
I am bent double
The stuffing of me kicked quite free
One side is fear that feels like unyielding felt, thick in my dry, slack mouth
Making me the puppet I never was, when good and whole
So is sickness for the soul
A sour well with brackish water and no yield
I long to be your child and retrace in time to your arms
Fantasies that never were, become, our lullaby
A palpable longing for comfort
Nourishment
To be saved against invisible foe
No
I did not invite you, fever dream
No
I did not beckon you visit me and stay, pinning my anxiety as colinder
Cast as we are, sluggish on fortunes wheel
Like chance, we ebb and flow
Moths without hardy wings
I desired wellness 
and while the summer river ran 
I believed it would never turn
Against me in undertow
Disease is a glutted wretch
A terrible betrayal
A war
You stand in rags fighting until your last
We all do 
But when the bees come and honey is glitter in the trees 
We forget our fear of unseen things
Believe ourselves immortal or at least
The sleek otter who can hold his breath
Longer than sense and her confine
For such a time I rested
Against this calm
Taking for granted what I did not own
And as winter will
Reveal herself bare and merciless
Soon those hours of peace lay behind me
Damp with regret and burned yet
To leave plumes of green smoke
Evoking Gods 
Who may be senseless to our call
For the comfort of our childhood
Curled inside a place
As yet unborn
Do not
Let me stay in this cold fear
Or stand alone 
With its frozen clasp about my heart
Squeezing hope til nothing pumps
But the ice of terror 
I am 
Just born
To this strange chill
The waking before dawn of prescient worry
Will I be well? Will I ever be without pain?
Oh mercy and her ink, clouding fortelling
The whine of our need to know, what Fates only jest
My gut is silent and 
Nothing but the fast snare of my pulse
Can be heard over lamment
I am
A statue of fear
Thinking back
To the Happy Prince
He felt pain
Of others
Taking the jewels that were his eyes
Sacrifice I do not have
A lesson
To think and care as we suffer
Of others and their
Equal walk 
In nightshade