blue handprints

i feel covered in blue handprints

like someone touched me everywhere

with invisible ink that i felt

but couldn't see and now

i've been dipped in fire

and i came out covered

in someone else's blue

visible and visceral and naked

vulnerable in a hospital gown

frozen in a blue puddle of pills

dissociated on the treadmill

but always printed and touched

always too visible and too felt

delicacy of the skin as tissue paper

rubbed raw and blue and untouchable

without flinching unsleepable

without nightmares

i wake up to blue fingerprints

on the lightbulbs and my vision, blue

i go to sleep with blue pills

i wake up with blue powder

i eat blue for breakfast and

don't taste it i shower and

i can't wash it off i can't change it

i'm covered in blue handprints

—December 2021, Stanford, CA