Recovery Wife
By Aleah Sato
You want to know what this is like.
You ask me to take it off.
You ask me to rub the gums,
to ease the itch.
You married to get sick with skin;
to dance the teeth and bones
for frenzy, comic book gems later retold
at conventions and in waiting rooms.
You wait for me – ten treatments in.
I am still swimming in the clouds
for you.
You want to know what it is like -
rooms of brethren, each sicker than
my regrets -In comes the dead –
loud echoes down hospital corridors.
Another dead drunk you imagine.
This time, a woman nearly my age,
pearls,
a smile
like the floating paralysis
of skin and tissue.
The flashbulb exposes
fine lines on the face,
delicate hands.
In the mirror of a surgical knife,
it's 2 a.m. and where's your wife.You want to know what this is like.
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