ferrous sulfate 325

By: Buck Adams

low cells to the blood pill

going down so it

tastes like red blood going down

a single-celled organism of

mineral-flavored thought

my own minerals: it really

is like that, i lose them

and have lost

the leaking bloodbag struggling

to scare the taste from my

wheel of fortune, my

symposium of yesterday’s feelings

yesterday’s pill,

yesterday’s process and

pencil sharpener, yesterday’s

heart kicking in my throat

peeling itself open like a quartered

tomato, fluids sluicing

my heart burps up what she’s fed

my heart will grow up to understand

her relationship with men is the

same as her relationship

with alcohol, she is my daughter

after all, so no one

can have her besides me

and drinking won’t be

a problem for my daughter

the problem will be her need to

turn off her surroundings

and men will be her problem

for a different reason

though she is the fruit

of my body, and her choices

are her own

my daughter must never feel the things i’ve felt

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Buck Adams (they/them) is a prison abolitionist attorney living in Portland, Oregon with one cat and way too many houseplants.