Infections are all adoring
to the malleable flesh of unwilling deities.
In the way that almsgivers subscribe the psalms
of their love in the prayers and curling smoke of incense,
so too does the eagerness of disease worship — rather, strive after
the parentage of the body. It is devotion to a god who does not
love back, whose bloodstream shuns the bread and wine, all
bones and cells and atomic fluid burning with resistance.
Such that illness dares to honor the heart and lungs,
one being is polytheism.