i. My eyes made the white room red. It is the inescapable colour rising from the streets, tunnels of marrow and the net cast across my shadow. I climbed down my own red neck. I swallowed heart and kidneys, my skull blanched but I couldn't make the inside anything other than red.
ii. The doctors are shining light on my bones, show- ing me how clean I've picked them. They compliment how I've shed the darkened flesh on my arms, slipping their white fingers into red meat. I'm slowly unzipping my skin, plotting impossible maps and walking them.
iii. In a week or so they'll find the car on the road- side, branches cradling every window like a pietà. Devotion pinned me up by the ears and left my organs to cure. God is a kind butcher but this engine will not subsist on blood alone.
Chris Emslie is assistant editor at ILK journal (www.ilkjournal.com) His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PANK, Sixth Finch and Word Riot, among others. He lives in Scotland with the clouds and his smart mouth.
