Parasite

You are so good, so terrible to me.
Please listen to Schubert and take your medicine. 
Standing by the bathroom window,
I count three honeybees and one hummingbird.
My eyes are clear. Contact lenses hum
in their case. Yesterday, I hunted you down
in Hayao Miyazaki films and animal documentaries.
I walked through my house, looking
for something you could eat. Said, I have six eggs, 
a three-legged chair, and an old flute. I mean
I am so lonely, so wary of men.
We passed our days in tradition, like the movies, 
where there is always a love story in a war,
a romantic defiance on the chessboard of death.
But in this story, you exhaust me 
like August and the news.
Everything I witness is yours.
I hate the way you lure confessions
out of my mouth, the way you tiptoe under my 
skin and stuff my heart into a feast.
Dear poem, take your god, 
your lovers, and go.

Read more from Issue 18.2.