Infections Evolving with Time

“Do they have memories? Just shadows in the mind like a hand passing between a candle and a wall.” - Stephen Dobyns

Julienne Maui Castelo Mangawang

In suffering, I learned humans were infections evolving with time. I left people my bloodline chained me to, wishing for my former body indulged by carrion beetles and ants breaking flesh into earth. I rested beneath a house nurturing generations of humans carrying diseases and grudges into rooms and onto plates. They passed on the vestiges of death to their own kind. I listened to the rambling of a woman who thought her child for a punching bag. Weeping ricocheted from walls and broke through the floor. A flood of beer came from beyond and I recalled 24

bottles red with the handprint of a man who claimed my face. Silence ensued when I heard his voice rumbling from the other side. Prayers he memorized never really saved him. Time had him accumulate years until the day he coughed. Down all the beers went and that is how he accepted he lost any sense of smell. He no longer had meaning on a bed. There was nothing next when his sight dimmed. Only maggots, on the twenty-fourth hour, met his taste and scent. In suffering, humans brought infections evolving with time. I rose from the floor of a house in renovation and forgot him in the bedroom years ago.