Another day, another symptom shows itself anon.

I imagine a cartoon sticker from my childhood: the Earth
sick, an old-school mercury thermometer dangling
out of its grimaced mouth–water bottle on its head. 
 
I promise I still have hope–a seed in my chest
I tend. It buds close to the loam of my swollen belly,
my body growing without medicine. I settle
into the corners of my apartment like creeper vine. 

If I can’t sew the world together with the tender
tendrils of my heart, at least I felt it there. I reckon
for all the corruption and grief, the hurt and fear,
there is the tender monochrome of text to hold me.