Postcard to Yourself Before Cortisone Treatments

Wrap each night in mosquito netting, each morning in sweat-
stained blankets before bursting the little suns on your skin. 
There was a time when, overnight, new hives emerged 
to run down the backs of your calves. Who knew of allergens 
yet; and who actually believed in stories of creatures 
that spun into themselves and weeks later emerged with bars 
of bronze or gold on new wings? It was the '60s: what 
did you know of transformation, except how the animals 
penned in the yard one day would wind up dangling 
from hooks or garlanded as sausages? The world, 
you were taught, was mostly practical—the law 
instead of lyric. Food instead of love. A cry pitched 
from the roof of the sky could make the shingles rattle. 
A cup of Queen Anne's Lace belled in the wind. In time, 
your skin hushed its eruptions, but not the fire inside.