Body Elixir, Blood Warrior

Imagine me a ripe tomato, my body’s elixir, gone sour,
rogue nodes tempering my body in preparation
for ruin. Imagine the red circuit housed within me,
the hallways humming hard as they do, the rose-
cut ruby of my life dimming at the very core.
Imagine me, not dead, still hoping. 

I envy the honey, its infinite half-
life and sweetness. I refuse to name you,
mirror of my malady, except that which
you already named yourself. Sickle, sabre,
scissors, scythe. O may metaphors
be damned.

On the eve of my tenth birthday, I woke up
and found myself dying. I still remember the animal
horror, the pinch and pulse of the pain.
It was one straight line between hospital and home.
Unfortunately, the doctor said on arrival,
though somehow, I lived. Ten days later, I find
a sickle cell booklet on the cabinet. It explained
a decade of drugs. It was freeing, if anything,
knowing then that my suffering had a name.

What flows through me now, not blood, but language.
Listen, as I shape and sharpen its gags and gurgles
into clubs. This is no field of science. This is where
giants meet to die; where I inherit, as friends, the enemies
of that enemy who stays in the shadows, sprouting fear
in songs of safety. I lose myself in living, the tedious
task of it; take pride in the sweet ache of my muscles,
whistling, “the work is the work is the work.”

I make no summary of my body for the sake
of sympathy. I use my drugs in the quiet of my room;
take no sick days. And yes, I do not like the term ‘Sickler.’
It lies too close to ‘sick’. I prefer ‘Sickle Cell Warrior.’
One shade short of ‘martyr,’ it suggests if I am to die,
I’ll do so standing, vertical, against the will of this body
which sets itself, as if on a raft, so close to ‘horizon.’