Hep C

It’s not your style to slaughter songbirds

or clear fell a forest, you settle for increments.

I was blind to your arrival at first—you came

like an incoming tide flooding mud flats—an influx

over more than forty years. In bed at night

you stir deep within, and my skin crawls,

but you’re an itch I cannot scratch. A talent for blood

ties, you know how to fool those you adopt as family;

they turn against themselves. And yet, you’re

cultured in your own way, so even as I grieve a limb,

or exhaust the energies your choke permits,

you leave me nimble enough of mind to pass

over the body of loss. I’ve come to call this grit,

and it’s true to say, you’ve never owned me.

Third time lucky, it seems I’ve found a means

to run you out, and if freedom lasts, I wonder

which bits of me I let go of, might be returned?

If not new, then pre-loved would be ok.

Lately I find myself in reverie, shadowed

by a boy who mistook himself a man—

his unencumbered flesh and blameless wild.