by Patrick G. Roland
I see her outline sleep, palms open, as if to hold
what I’ll never offer.
She renamed me: Husk.
Rusted spade, spent matches, broken.
Scaffold of memory, exposed at corners.
The stench of me fermenting.
Before I can leave,
I splinter: shards of broken cupboards,
a chair leg snapped in two.
Then slip through cracked floorboards,
into the mouths of waiting termites.
Let them chew skin, organ, cartilage.
Hollow me, until I blur like dust.
She fades me with the forgotten:
tungsten rings slipped into vents,
a Kenneth Cole without buttons,
driver’s license dulled white.
I dissolve into her dreams,
like a floor caving under her weight,
joists riddled with passageways—
C. formosanus, subterranean.
I go by powder, by fall.
Patrick G. Roland is a writer and educator living with cystic fibrosis. He explores life’s experiences through poetry and storytelling, seeking to inspire others in the classroom and through writing. His work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Sky Island, scaffold, Emerge Literary, Wild Roof, and others. Twitter: @pg_roland
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