J.M.

The Patient. A girl of fourteen with round
cheeks, blushes of pink blooming. She sprouts,
freckles that show her youthful fresh-face. Bound
for sweetness. Then the reel comes; no way out.

Deeper than the earth’s fire she wheezes, she roars,
inflaming the groundlings of her lungs. Bogged
branches climb her airways, her voice is sore.
The slow drip warning has been counting, clogged.

Liquid trapped and is pooling with no space
to expand. Hack, hack! black breathless bellows
burn. She stops and sets in reverse back, traces
where the spores of mold first began to swell.

She sighs, paints an outline of a phoenix,
emerald green, pink, and sky blue matrix.

– T.W.