Poems and Pills

I think about all the poems
I have coughed up till now
Soft like feathers
With razor sharp edges.
Lethal when stuck inside
Coated with my blood
Puncturing my organs
One by one by one.

Sometimes they stay inside
Trapped in my rib cage
And sometimes they escape
Wreaking havoc in my body
Cutting through the bones
Ripping open the veins
Pounding dead my heart.

They keep growing inside me
One at a time
Two at a time
Too many. Too many.
Too many.
Each one with teeth.
Each one hungry.

The doctors say
My intestine has shrunk half its size
And my ear canals are too narrow
And I—
I never seem to grow
Too short for my age
Too small, too skinny.
It’s all these poems in me.
Surgery can cut me open
And instead of 206 bones
You’ll find 74,950 poems
(And pieces of my organs).

Every so often I cough—
Cough up poems
Covered in my blood.
Delicate and not used to the cold outside.
So easily destroyed.
I can’t decide
Which is safer
Keeping them inside or
Vomiting. Vomiting everything
Out.

Sometimes the poems never grow.
They appear like wisps of smoke
Lost in the universe
And die like fetuses
Killed in India, in China
Unheard, unknown.
Not remembered.
Unverifiable statistics.

And sometimes when I cough,
Very, very rarely
They bear colors of the peacock feather
Iridescent.
And I know somebody inside me
Is painting.
Barely surviving.
Barely.

All these poems are growing -
Garish.
Ghastly.
Grotesque.
Gnawing. Gnawing.
Gnawing.
Away.

And there’s a painter
Trying to turn
The remaining 74,590 colorful.

Maybe it’s why the poems grow
They know there is hope
Just like sometimes I hope
Of a life beyond the pills.
Pills. Pills. Pills.
Colorful pills.

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