Body, Alissa Leigh

Washed by the rough nurse of morning,

wheeled into the ward of the afternoon,

feeds, grateful, on the rich broth of dusk.

Reads the erratic cards of dreams,

turns on the rack of insomnia,

steals the two-bit grace of sleep.

Loses its name in foreign embraces,

forges a passport to the country of tenderness,

gestures like a child at the thing that it wants,

opaque from its own breath on the glass.