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QUINN EADES
The body is a tunnel is tunnels is tunnelling where
tunnelling is acrossness is never down or up because the body is all ways a
tissue a tunnel net that goes in every in no direction.
By the time I am home from the hospital the rosehips are waiting to be harvested along my front fence the fig tree has lost its fruit and leaves the bats have left even the bold as fuck possum that trawls my fence line has disappeared.
When the bats were still here fig tree gobblers teeth shredders I met you. You messaged me on an app you had kind eyes a smile that reached them but the last man who messaged me on an app came to my home and I could not get him out for I can't tell you how long because decimation because digging in far enough to tear apart tunnels takes years takes an hour takes a body takes a no a no a no a no a no.
Before hospital I am laid out flat I am night sweats I am soaked sheets pyjamas changed five times in the night in the radiating pain in expulsion expulsion expulsion. I cannot speak I am unvoiced I am tunnelled in shivering foetal submerged in the violence of a body fighting what comes in unbidden, what we cannot get out.
You arrived with a packet of biscuits and we sat in my backyard and drank tea and I did not disappear. You were kind and gentle and when I drove you up to the station we kissed, awkwardly, at the red light.
At the hospital you are with me. Needles into tunnels drugs and fluids into veins scope through anus into colon tunnel hunting. What is here that should not be. What is the body fighting. How much more fluid can we lose how many more inflammatory markers can we gain which symptoms do we ignore how do we empty this bed.
A week later I am home the figs are gone you are still here. You are warm and gentle and handsome and we tunnel into each other in the aftermath and I do not I do not disappear. You are tunneler and tunnelled as am I. We hold each other with fists and forearms, with throats and mouths, spiralling in and through bodies, with love.
By the time I am home from the hospital the rosehips are waiting to be harvested along my front fence the fig tree has lost its fruit and leaves the bats have left even the bold as fuck possum that trawls my fence line has disappeared.
When the bats were still here fig tree gobblers teeth shredders I met you. You messaged me on an app you had kind eyes a smile that reached them but the last man who messaged me on an app came to my home and I could not get him out for I can't tell you how long because decimation because digging in far enough to tear apart tunnels takes years takes an hour takes a body takes a no a no a no a no a no.
Before hospital I am laid out flat I am night sweats I am soaked sheets pyjamas changed five times in the night in the radiating pain in expulsion expulsion expulsion. I cannot speak I am unvoiced I am tunnelled in shivering foetal submerged in the violence of a body fighting what comes in unbidden, what we cannot get out.
You arrived with a packet of biscuits and we sat in my backyard and drank tea and I did not disappear. You were kind and gentle and when I drove you up to the station we kissed, awkwardly, at the red light.
At the hospital you are with me. Needles into tunnels drugs and fluids into veins scope through anus into colon tunnel hunting. What is here that should not be. What is the body fighting. How much more fluid can we lose how many more inflammatory markers can we gain which symptoms do we ignore how do we empty this bed.
A week later I am home the figs are gone you are still here. You are warm and gentle and handsome and we tunnel into each other in the aftermath and I do not I do not disappear. You are tunneler and tunnelled as am I. We hold each other with fists and forearms, with throats and mouths, spiralling in and through bodies, with love.