My body is a river in recovery from another body.

We’re all just out here trying our best

but some people’s best is fucking awful

and that’s not my fault. I’m exhausted. 

The sun cannot set in the same river twice

or something. I adore how its pink flesh pollutes

the river’s mummy-flesh, like that time 

on holiday, as a kid, when I was so sick 

all that came up was rot and algae, bile and silt,

silt, the dark rind of a dagger so eroded 

it was a mistranslation, a misunderstanding, 

the slit in my side. Is my body property? 

Help me, I need to change all the batteries 

in all the smoke alarms and chandeliers,

the realtors are coming, I don’t want them to notice

the water damage, the low ground,

the predictability of living 

on a floodplain.