The problem is my blood, they say.
There’s too much of it.
In other words, I have done this to myself.
With their signatures I am delivered tiny pills,
hundreds of them, metoprolol, valsartan,
hydrochlorothia—I don’t know, until
I am no longer a man but a sheath
into which pills can be poured
but it makes no difference. Blood begets blood.
I can feel them, the cells copulating in my arteries
their birth a newness forced on this old body.
I get dizzy.
On Thursday I find myself on the floor at the grocery.
It is a kind of death; no one seems to notice.
They say the pills are working, but I don’t believe them—
they do not hear the factory whirr of my bones,
my overfilling heart. I know my blood’s spoiled,
lost to me now, like the wife
you can no longer stand touching. You know
she means well, and isn’t her fault—she just isn’t what
you thought she’d be. But neither of you is going anywhere—
you’ve made your choice, there’s no time for anything else.
by Anna Moore
Anna Moore is an editor, poet, creator of small fictions, and inarticulate pursuer of the ineffable. Major interests include books and their futures, reading and the brain, literacy and psychology, the collection and dissemination of information, and the construction and structure of meaning. Anna is from Denver, Colorado, has lived in Mérida, Venezuela; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Los Angeles, California. She currently resides in both Providence, Rhode Island, and Brooklyn, New York.
