Where mist meets disappearance, the narrator speaks of sickness
not because it is pretty, but because it is familiar.
Words replace failed organs. Words replace the community.
And while everybody is sick, only some get sustenance.

The narrator speaks childlike into a solitary microphone
hiding a gash. Once, he kissed it to make it better.
He told her that she was radiant. And yet we are only sick
one at a time, when it's convenient for others, when pills
are the shape of conscience, when we whisper sweet rumors

about the disappeared. The narrator speaks into the attentive
ear of the politician, the doctor getting kickbacks, and
any possible donors. We compose a useless symphony not
for sympathy. Yes, the narrator speaks of justice but not
of practice. The orchestra of the body is missing an instrument,
a valuable piece. Words replace the notes, the failure

of this community, but they cannot replace you. They cannot
replace the deliberate kiss, holding the narrator's purse
in waiting rooms, in figures of speech, and in your absence,
she speaks of nothing but fragments, miles between
fragments, and the dream of returning home.