Jennifer Perrine

Des Moines, IA

Maggot Therapy

If only I could introduce you to all my wounds

to work your healing art, to debride this necrotic

part every medic has tried to restore. Let me add

you to my armamentarium, to all the ways

I’ve excised this grief, to the panoply of magnets

and massage, twelve steps and hypnosis, sex, drugs, and rocks

of rough words sunk to plumb this well. You could colonize

each burn left by a lover’s tongue, fingers frostbitten

by their own frigid touch, the bone marrow infection

of regret. I’d let you feast until we both transmute:

you into the green bottle fly, scintillant buzz and speck

of miracle, and I’ll come through, too, as gleaming pink

tissue, as living flesh marked by your digestive kiss,

remnant of the damage where you wriggled with delight.