The inflammation lion eats my body in bed,

my hands too swollen to lift the glass beside my bed.

 

Neck, knees, feet, elbows, wrists, fingers—entombed

in tumescent lion flesh. I’m paralyzed in bed.

 

I can only fight the lion with my cobwebbed

brain. Hallucinations swirl around this sickbed.

 

I imagine tossing the lion into the ocean, his heat absorbed

by frigid currents tugging him down to a turbulent seabed.

 

In dark, dense waves, he transmutes into sea lion, robed

in sleek fat, while I shiver under weighty quilts on my bed.

 

Underwater, I still burn—my water glass undisturbed,

out of reach, as I battle hot and cold lions lying in bed.

 

Che sara Sara. What I can’t grasp with hand or mind succumbed

to lions who climbed into and claimed this bed.