Waiting for Wednesday

Brain and body crusted in panic
A hardened film of scales that flakes and cracks,
only to resurface and congeal once more

I am somewhere beneath the crust
I am under the blood and softened tissue,
fissures in the skin, liquid cells rising
and beginning to fester

Pus is a definite sign of bacteria and infection
Leave it be, they say
The human urge to purge and push is too great
for me stay my hands
I have no fear of puckering scars

Doctors never account for the erosion of waiting,
the toll it exacts from the basic functioning systems

like eating, thinking, existing

All my organs are hushed
They have ceased their frenetic hustle,
paused with quaking kneecaps

I breathe, just barely, somewhere underneath

This dragon scale skin shifts,
a river that undulates with sporadic inefficiency
Bloating and expanding until I am the throat of a frog,
accordion filled lungs,
a cascading filing cabinet,
a volcano mid-cough,
every inch of my body
waiting
Only to deflate, defeated and loosened

When the time comes,

I want to trade every piece of my panic-etched skin
for an inch away from absolute certainty
Already forgetting the torture of ignorance,
willing to give anything to sink beneath the surface
one last time

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