*
Contrary to what they believed, I was never allergic to skin. Or sunrays. I wasn’t a cadre.
**
Arrested by three. Tortured by five. Fornication. For negligence. For negation. Wasn’t that a question about a syzygy? Or posture? He even pawned his pearls to pose with my wax figure. I sneezed profusely in their hands.
***
First they spoke a language that embraced you like a failed state. Then they switched. Like a passage from winter to summer, the transition was ungovernable, and violent.
****
Damn you all! Indecent infixes, triple consonants and doted vowels!
Like Mi Aye, I’ve had it twice.
Once for being too yellow.
Once for being too white.
*****
Even after they’d renamed pollen fever hay, I insisted watchful trees mustn’t bloom. Rain may settle dust, but leave us with wet pyres. For padauk, however, drizzle is never enough.