The language of the sick is one of gasps and whispers,
madness halved and muted, put on like a velvet skin
above the crimson nakedness of blood. It is only human
when the holy cold comes licking full of flame tongue and false
promise to want to pare the bone from muscle
like a butcher, press the flesh against the surface
of the world and scratch the skin like silver foil—it is only
natural to dream of death in the long low months
like a slow snarl in the throat's hollow saying please,
please—eros the dissolver of the flesh come back
again to haunt you in the body of a writhing animal,
all rabbit-skinned and weak-kneed and hungry for blood.
Aubade as it Begins to Snow by Margaret Wack | Pink Peony Poetry Reed Diffuser
Margaret Wack is the author of the chapbook The Body Problem, winner of the 2021 Orison Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Sixth Finch, Sho Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.
