My Lazy Veins, my Voodoo Doll Body, for Sherri

Hospital trip #2 was an underwhelming whisper:

What I remember most was my acceptance, my admittance

Arms and palms upturned, like a glimmering soft virgin

Hands empty, arms fluid, limp as an old ragdoll with eyes missing,

With dirt rubbed into her

Pale fabric cheeks, yarn hair ripped out in obvious places, as a result

Of too    much   love

The doctor said, you are going to feel

Cold; doctors always describe feelings as nouns, which is what they are anyway

I wanted to murmur that I knew

The drill as he stuck a thick rushing needle

Deep and hard into my half-ass veins

Where the blood was your favorite color

A purple haze that I could see through

Glowing weakly underneath smooth pale white cold

The nurse laid a blanket at my feet that I pretended not to need and

I showed a similar attitude toward your manicured hand

But as that water that was inserted into me spread

I shivered a breath through embarrassed tears and you

Asked me if it hurt, this woman who had felt iodine burn

But never the frozen sting of

Everything I Ever Needed

That I had denied myself

Was as obvious, as black and white as hospital bills

I cried then because I was sorry,

And I cried because that’s what I said the last time I got away with it