Above the midnight party, a lantern is lit for your past self,
the heaviest of the flames unable to take flight with others.
Next week, oxygen will be in short supply as the tissue

turns black, not necrotic; instead, it pumps its memories
inside you – this is your cape or cowl. A host where all the lice
gather with their black-heart husks, maskless and revealed.

Beneath this rot, you have become nothing but the breeding
ground for tongue-eating lice; the males all masters of infiltration,
while you were seduced by his lover who spoke away your existence,

severing your ties with speech and negotiating a new purpose.
Cored; the sickness is removed and tossed into compost, picked up
on Thursday by the long-beaked doctor, and spread across the sky

without warning; only those truly wanting with their hands outstretched.
In its advanced stages, you will begin to feel spongey needles on your feet.
Let your better parts find the sky; free you of the infestation.

The spider-wasps of the colourless forest have stolen lead-
tins from my mother’s grave, and with it, all yellows are now born raw,
allergic; prone to strokes of loosestrife on canvas.

Who will tell the yellows they can’t be purples?
We’ve tailed lead so long, cousins of colours are being born
deformed; burnt oranges falling from mounted frames become

letters to thieves: pumpkin pie to bury their fingers in
to feel the warmth of my mother’s fever: a frozen chicken thigh,
skin on; the crust of earth: a web in the tightest corner of her closet

is where they nest, strangling the yellow from her sac, stealing
the silk from her touch. Those that can’t scurry are frail to face me;
a set of stillborn eyes fixed on their molesting scrapes, coffined

inside the mountains of empty lead tins overcasting her bronze husk.
I will hold the secret of what has happened here.