It's been an elliptical time

 CW: sickness, covid

I measure my time with covid in cups of tea. 

Not food, for I have no appetite. 

When a body is used to biking sixty miles

To hiking mountains and wrestling trees 

And it finally finds itsself stilled--food seems uninteresting 

(my body is uninterested)

And not with sleep--the fickle friend

I stay up long hours into the night, thrashing and sweaty under the covers

And nap fitfully throughout the day time

My sleep losing the careful meter I have come to enjoy

A broken metronome swinging wildly and without reason

I work the same: in fits and starts, sloppy unedited emails from my phone

Maybe in the afternoon, maybe at 2am

(I have nothing else to do)

But I carefully measure out the tea--I know my body needs the liquid

Hot and minty, or sometimes green

I boil the whole kettle and slowly drip it into myself

My body takes it more easily on some days then others

And like this, as the tea disappears and becomes me

I know some time has passed. 

Fuck your septum ring

Fuck your septum piercing and your rattlesnake tattoo

Fuck the essays you read about object/subject metaphor

Fuck your hair and fuck your eyes, especially when they sparkle blue

Fuck that I'm just "not exactly that which you've been searching for"

Fuck that you think you're still straight even though you dated me

Fuck when you get angry over losing simple games

Fuck that road trip we took through Rhode Island to "gaze at the sea"

Fuck that all your friends never learned how to say my name

Fuck that I was only ever ends to your self-realized means

Fuck that time you stood me up at the movie Encanto

Fuck the way I felt in my chest when you said you're leaving

Fuck the way these tears rained down to soil far below

The fall ground is soaked and cold rain flows and drips below the tree roots

 The sky at sunset is painted a glowing scarlet rose

The trees shed their all leaves and I think that I must follow suit

Naked and washed clean, my branches bare, my heart exposed

 

Summer turns to autumn and I know my form belongs 

Among the trees (I hate that you rejoice in metaphor)

Fuck that I still think of your approval etched across this song

Maybe when the season turns I'll think of you no more.