Just being here     just being another capitalist

drone again     seems like magic     like a spell

cast around my once-defeated heart     how I am

able to walk again for hours and still speak

without collapsing in a pool of phlegm and sweat

how I can focus just long enough to understand

the language of barcodes when before I could

barely say my own name     it must be a satchel

of orange peels in my pocket     a glaze of citrus

and mint rubbed against the glands in my neck

the musk of tangerines lingering in my beard

these are prayers I can hold in my hands     this

is pulling the sun from my pocket in the middle

of my long night     I am eating this to stay upright

I am chewing this flesh to keep mine just as sweet