Horus Balogh-Zanin
CORDYLOBIA ANTHROPOPHAGA
Two years old I writhed
In time with the maggots within me
The first scars on my skin the tiny homes of other living creatures.
My mother had a nesting doll
Later the pockmark scars itched when I looked at it.
My brother said they doused me in iodine
Took tweezers to the holes,
Pulling out the other residents one by one
Until the last living thing left in this body was the thing they thought was me—
The only one to survive the purge.
An infestation is an intrapersonal relationship.
A larva is a human being between the stages of birth and metamorphosis.