SICK LIVING

                 For the wax mannequin rolling out of the living room

​

Sleep-sweat and shivers

seep through cracks

in the blinds, waking

us each milk-thick morning with eyelashes

caked in years of dust,

 

caked like the tops of humid-crowded

ceiling fans gliding eternally, caked

 

like her film-coated brain.

The ceiling watches us

 

watching her,

and we sigh until nightfall.

 

Her shivers lean in, whisper

through her fragile hair,

 

“You are not special.

This dusty husk

is the only one you inhabit.”

Each shiver, rupturing

the house like tumors, hisses:

​

“So rub sugar into your bed sores

to sanitize them.”

 

So we rub sugar into the bed sores

and we rub salt and whispers into them too,

 

looking up past the ceiling

that watches us and sighs

 

until milk-filled nightfall - she is spatial,

listening through drywall,

 

molecules crowded, eyes

cracked open, sleeping,

then closed

but still caked,

crystallized by evaporation and sweat.