Chasing Hippocrates

Distance. In duct tape and whisky. The cautious lies of skin. Whisper their stories. Into the ears of the deaf. Auditors embracing the fleshy pulpit of touch. Paradise will never be so close as it is when you're waiting. For the rain to remember.

the dead shuffling their bones. Poker skeletons. Earnest monsters. Horns misplaced. The soft soil. Ripe with holes. The gentle arc of acceleration as it catches up with gravity.

Carriers. Like the sickness is enough. Just stones. Rocks hitting the window. In epiphanies of disease.

Born into illness. Bred into complacency.

A little girl. Gathering her twigs. Choking on her medicine.