Trystan Popish
BODY OF WATER
A silver device the size of a small fish,
the monitor is flush
against my abdomen with a thin spine submerged
under my skin.
This spine can taste the sugar in my blood,
each sampling
five minutes apart, each one a dot
upon a graph
that shows how well I have controlled the highs
and lows that come.
On days like this—when my blood sugar draws
a silhouette of waves,
when I am thrown from crest to trough between
the lows and highs,
when I, adrift and bruised and drenched
upon a sugar sea,
throw myself on the mercy of the tides
of this disease—
on days like this, I do not contain
organs, bones, or veins,
but a body of water, coursing with currents
I can’t control,
waves that roil and roll, crests that swell
and fall, fill me
with nausea from all these ups and downs
until the waves pound
against the inside of my skin and I try but I
cannot cage this
and the sound from my mouth
is the keening cry
of a land bird lost over the ocean.