We hear swallows breaking the backs of worms.
I ask if he's eating and his answer is beans,
black Peruvian beans as he slows his face
to the bowl. If anything breaks, he says, it's meant to.
This is not the fear of his dying body,
he refuses, but a tattoo of his childhood,
hours full of shelling beans, sorting the undeveloped from the developed,
a process much like the way he sorts his life,
hazy face in a hospital gown, bald head in hospital air,
a clean cold, eyes like soup bowls that comfort the bed sheets
holding his skin like warm water,
his bare shoulder blades bulging like half-closed gates.
This is a going until he's blinded, when meaning troubles meaning�
the sick sick sick of being sick�