From the ivory piano keys comes an ache
that cannot fill the cavity of this room;
the desire for slim youthful bodies,
love, and chocolate at midnight.
I am a guilty house guest rummaging through drawers,
and in the overabundant cabinets filled with canned food;
prune/apricot soup and small pyramids of jars
filled with seven kinds of mustard.
In the freezer, diet meals sleep in cybernetic suspension.
From this feast of dark chocolate and blueberries
my cheek numbs and swells like a beesting. Allergy.
Small, opaque stones; pills glistening in my hand
to push the darkness back into its corners.
I have trouble breathing & I'm afraid
of dying in the intimacy of a stranger's house
like my friend Boschka, with her wild drooping cheek,
and aslant smile which provoked
occasional screams from unsuspecting infants
and even the most seasoned of friends.
The melodious Bell's Palsey resounds in my ear
and my face takes on the same shape as hers.
She died in a bed not her own
and her ashes under the gravenstein tree,
were made into apple pies as she wished
but something in her hungers for this world.
I feel like the outside cat, close to death,
desperate to come into the forbidden house
one last time.
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