Anaphylactic Shock/Hivemind

All these fragments from a sting—shrinking and expanding
concurrently, the lower half of a hollow body left behind

like an oblong pill swallowed at eighteen; when I realized
rooms couldn’t be spun by their handles. The numbing fades

if you want it to, so write about velvet and lacquer,
linoleum and sandpaper—things I can touch

because I want to feel
like my chest cavity isn’t out of reach.

Who needs eggshells when there are stingers
thorning their way into my bare feet, as I become

what I did not want to be at all—half heart,
the other part organic machine. Tell me

when you dreamed about radiance, eyes stumbling
over the aurora borealis and its gentle implosion

of the night horizon. For that moment of singularity,
we pretended the wild never bit us

back— as if the plague had been distended
and I had always been willing to survive.

By H.G. Cajandig

Biography:

H.G. Cajandig is an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University, where she reads poetry for Passages North. Her work has appeared in The Ore Ink Review, and is forthcoming at Snapdragon. She is also currently working on a chapbook. Before attending graduate school, she interned for The Missouri Review and Persea Books.