Originally published in The Seraphic Review
Blood on the tissue.
Stomach tumbling
to hard tile, anchored to
expiration.
I thought I was prepared,
every acrobatic bathroom visit bracing body brain and guts.
Til a speck of encroaching red
spreads beyond itself
inaudible insensible shrapnel cruel.
In ricocheting glazed enclosures, in musty unkempt stalls, in tidy papered retreats,
restored possibility turned
rusted coolant flushed from a radiator.
A tenth of a millimeter.
Was everything.
Now nothing.
Outside stainless-steel patrons totter on tired feet
so I stand, and the sinking rises,
a churning shade of suspended potential,
the dust dismantled and the breath expelled
into the desolate stillness of pending
into the melancholy promise of next month.