Cheriton Bishop Hospital, 3 a.m.

Convalescent is another word for cichlid,
another word for blood parrot, a word for
What was I thinking?

We all remember the moment before we
jumped. We all wonder how different
our lives would be now if we hadn’t.

If we had stopped, if we had called
our mother, our brother, if we had had
a brother, a mother who cared, if we

had cared, if care had been a thing and things
had been different. I tend to sink into these
volutes of counterfactuals at night.

At night, there isn’t much to do. I track
the prudent beat of my own heart, the slick
booming, zooming machines, the drone

of the song that keeps me alive.

Of birds, their influence on the weather

Now the body is cloaked in birds—
flutters of wings, all feverish,
and I will not find a way out.

How different the face of a cat
must look to birds. I have lost blood,
rivers of it, all of my left fingers.

At first you float, then you tire,
and then you drown. I have seen
birds do that, and thought: Why not?

Why continue to strive for strikes
through the surface, when it is evident
that I will sink, toward the end—being

feathered, not finned. I have
a fever, a feeling that I do need
a rest. How the passing of time itself

has unraveled. I ride the very heart
of hurt—I am becoming another.
How timely, the turning of the season:

The rain at last.
The thing called “you” shall pass. 

Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is a person and a poet living in Asia. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Abridged, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter: @bachtlorele

Photo by Tracy Whiteside