Poetry

by Emily Paige Wilson

My illness is a gold-plated

           bowl of grapes—purple fruit rejuvenating

 

no matter how many hungers

            I’ve starved. My illness is an invisible

 

ink-carved scar, plastic shine admissible

            only when shellacked in black light.

​

What is to be said to parents

           who’ve raised one boy with autism—

 

almost diagnosed as deaf when words

           didn’t form like the weatherman said—

 

another boy with diabetes—body shocked

           by its own culprit sugar into comas?

 

What would I tell my brothers? 

           Hypochondria—suspended—upended.

 

If bones are too brittle a home,

           it will make itself known elsewhere:

 

a pain with no preference: eyes, liver, 

          muscle mollusk music every tiny movement.

​

There will always be more grapes.

           Yes, what would I tell my family?

 

Please, come closer. Cough on this

           directory I’ve stitched together,

 

this incomplete catalogue of my indulgence.