Swaddle

There’s an olive in the center.

Don’t stare at it- we will hear you.

Just bags of skin that walk around smiling, really;

feasting on fingernail tips and split-end frizzles,

feet tapping until noon

when the mailman comes, delivering bills

and two-cent checks.

I could sit here mumbling all day to

cigarette butt flem rolling over and over

across the table.

L. My name is L. My ass is plastered to this Lazy Boy

because I won’t answer to the mail man

anymore.

A woman put me here 3 years ago.

She thought my skin went nicely

with the dollar store shower curtain.

Now I rest upon a tower of bed sores

and decaying fecal matter.

I still look good with the curtain. It’s rusted over now.

I’m still here, but not long.

The police came at 8:16 PM Saturday evening.

They say the stench was so

that grown men cried like infants.

He was there, seemingly alert

but his nails were baby blue

and his hair frayed to death.

He was 43.

The paramedics wrapped him in an old shower curtain

and carried him and the chair through a wall cut-out.

He looked like a cradled child, still fused with his mother.

His neighbors said they had no idea.

The olive explodes

and his person splits in two.