I slice into it every morning,
lengthwise, with the same knife
I use to spread butter on my toast.
A thin film of it covers everything,
a spell of haze getting thicker by the day.
I don’t taste the butter anymore,
and it stops mattering
that I hadn’t had white bread
since 2013, maybe longer.
All this whole grain on my palate.
All that fiber in my digestive system.
I used to count calories and pounds.
Numbers had arms I could run to,
for comfort. I wish
health could be quantified.
The odds of beating this.
The odds of living.
The odds of sitting in this dubious silence
with the variables I couldn’t begin
to write down leaking from every
piece of plumbing in the house.
Drip, drip, drip.
Sometimes being out of control
is a still life painting. Texture of breakfast
under patch of light, neutral, unpolitical.
The hands poised to assume a gesture
either of mad destruction or surrender
but from this side of the canvas
we can’t tell because the enemy
is one we can’t see. Or hear.
Drip, drip.