Just Surviving

I live within an illness
No one else can see;
Neither lesions blue
Nor bruises true,
My disfiguring ivy climbs
More deadly underneath.
I slowly bore witness;
How people retreated
From the bleeding
And the peeling –
Their movements
Are much the same today
Away from me, a routine
Diminishing mirror image,
They could evaporate
The bones in my heart,
These exsanguinated shadows,
My leprosy made apparent
In the parabolas of my
Homeless dome,
Emerging beneath my bare Enola,
Arms outstretched,
Not one person to hold.

The world is lacking outrage now.
I know why my father lied
When he said I had no business
In being a father myself.
Feather in his cap,
Imagination leaks,
My fear is only from not knowing
The difference between my loneliness
And my outgoing dreams.