This fever is my tutor. It lectures
 scarlet on my cheeks, pale quarter-moons

on all my fingernails, a heart that gallops beneath
the cold sting of stethoscopes unleashed.

I repose & ripen with the weight of secrets,
for I swore an oath to silence.

This bed my penitentiary, though 
my chains be pointless, cotton-woven.

Lethargy of limbs another symptom 
pressed into the chart. The noise of the pen

blisters the brain. The catheter in the vein 
delivers ruination, dreams induced to knock

my damaged crown askew. When I wake, my bones 
have been replaced with porcelain, sinew

altered to wire, and my tongue, my tongue 
lets loose what once was barred & guarded.