Poem: Empathic Contortionist

She’s mixing portioning

incense lightning

eye closed musing

humming thinking

with her eyes and lips

dreaming therapy soup

with the smile of a hybrid angel.

Sophisticated classlessness

intentional crumbling

she’ll switch herself

out of a crowd of leering.

She doesn’t want the risk

of deep water sinking

breathing in everyone else’s bruises

as if they were hers,

she has no antibodies for empathy

and she doesn’t want to be a nurse

Florence Nightingale curse

sounds so celibate and holy and lonely.