toxic shock syndrome

this way of waking up
in touch of hands
is ruined
and becomes complicated
turns into merely a syndrome:
a cluster of symptoms to be treated
and caused by lovely
minutes when she let him in
to space already occupied
by string and cotton

it wouldn't have happened
without this silver moment of allowing
ourselves to live
only in the present
jangling the nerves
saying: touch me there
the skin glowing
colors of physical excitement
in process of gradual abandon

the quick and healthy
reaction comes to stop
under white lights
in the stirrups
on the steel table
for only an excrutiatingly slow moment
of toxic extraction
and antibiotics to follow for infection,
only slight, you were lucky
the nurse said

and the nurse said: you should've been
worried three days ago
but she didn't ask how it happened
and she didn't say what the woman
on the table heard anyway:
you should be ashamed
and the woman was
and the woman always is

shame is a metal tool
entering to grab
what was kept too long
in there and soaked to obliteration
ruining the fibers they say
in cuddly commercials
are meant for protection
damaging the surrounding tissue
so soft and receptive
entering the bloodstream with poison

toxic to the way lovers want to
wake up, touch and lose themselves
shocking them out of an oblivion
they had blissfully chosen

shame ruins
the jangling moment
when you say: touch me there
and enter into the emotional complications
be part of
the beautiful forgetfulness
and never return
to the cold steel
table of the world again