Blue Cross Blue Shield wants me dead. It’s the only thing we have

in common.

​

Blue picks the restaurant: an empty pill bottle, dopamine pixie dust

still sticking to the sides. It’s almost pretty–– the orange, the confinement.

 

It begins with typical first date questions, like Are you sleeping?

When you are, is it paradise or purgatory? Do you sometimes feel like time has curdled

​

& sits on your skin? Does it feel like a scab or a rash? Do you even feel anything

anymore?

 

& what is there to do except blow bubbles into my red wine,

tell them I love Zinfandel but it gives me a headache

 

to which they remind me I’ve already told them that, remind me

I’m not supposed to be drinking & I remind them

 

that I’m only flesh & Brut. Blue says Tell me something

no one knows about you. & what is there to say

 

except I want everything to be funny & precious,

that it stings when it’s not, that it never is.

 

I tell Blue I’m a sundial or two because I am beautiful

& useless.

 

I tell Blue that I want to talk about pedagogical implosions

& that I have never quite figured out how

 

to pick out good watermelon, always bringing home mush.

As they twirl their pen, trying to figure out what boxes to check

 

they ask why it isn’t, why I am, why I don’t

in a mindless way, like an heirloom opal being used as a skipping stone.

 

I tell Blue I don’t want to talk anymore.

They say I don’t think that’s true and that’s true.

 

Blue Cross Blue Shield finishes their paperwork

& denies my chemical request, calls me a liar.

 

Suddenly, I want to live

desperately.