Mary Swander

We are the nothing-to-lose ones,

the try-anything-once ones,

weed seeds inside our cells –

dandelion, nettle, lizard tail –

roots sunk in, for it is the tips

that count, reaching out to tap

new moisture. Roots, stems, leaves,

the stomata, those little mouths

opening, closing, sucking in air

in the evening when we boil

wild ginger and sleep in its vapor.

Like cures like, we hear in the morning

when we brush ourselves with

vegetable fiber in the shower,

beat ourselves with our fists.

(This is no crazier than anything else.)

I bet on the reptiles, on the scaly-skinned,

the spadefoot toad who burrows backward

and sleeps seven feet down in the sand.

I go with the insects who breed and feed at night,

with the single-celled protozoan protected

from the heat by is own cyst.

I bet on the woman on the couch with

a growth on her cheek, the seven-year-old

in cowboy boots with eczema head to toe.

I roll for the shay hand, spastic muscle, drooling lip.

I roll for the palsied girl that she may walk,

the diapered man that he may no longer drip.

I lie hour after hour, staring at the lightbulb

in that lamp over the bed, then everything seems rimmed

in peelings – the intercom, the nurse’s caps, the strings

that tie this gown around my neck. I’m encased in

this room and if I could pull away the rind of this illness,

it’s been so long, I wonder what might be left underneath.

My skin. No one can understand the pain of being touched.

Or not. The problem: not even a rash to show the staff

bustling in at 6 a.m. Disappointing, I’m sure, for the interns.