in my recent bloodwork chart, I saw it and I fled.
Panic ripped through me like sallow gas
and as an animal would,
I must have believed
I could hide from my own leaking math. Pregnancy
or tumor—those were the options
and I wasn’t sure which one I wanted
less. Around and around I went
in my apartment parking lot as if pursued
through carmine alleyways. Oh, my blood
and its mutable omens. My brain and its end
of days. It didn’t matter
that the dusk was beautiful in the early
rainy season when the sky takes
on the plush and tropical hues of stone
fruits so I could remember that I lived
in a place far but not too far
from the ocean. Magnolia flowers sat
primly in their teacups. Gray and white
birds shone where they flew like lights
off moving water. It started to get dark.
My parents couldn’t find me.
My boyfriend was asleep
halfway across the world. I walked as if to leave
behind my body, though I understood
I had to receive what it offered me.
So this is what it means
to be alone, I said inside myself
and to myself as a violet wind pushed through
the palm fronds above me, initiating a sound I recognized
like the rustle of dry grasses
before a storm, as the first
stars opened their eyes to nightfall
the way an apocalypse can mean
to reveal.