The day when you ford the Schuylkill
In your secret senility, you will be hooked
By the cast-off whalebone of some mistress’s
Underthings and fully dipped in waste

pickle juice
battery juice
fish spit and
gut colloid.

You will emerge coarsely exfoliated, a yellow wood
that has been labored over,

You will be so confused.

Each finger, each toe, will soften like toothpicks.
This is what I wish for you.
To feel glass become sand.

Ailin Luca was published and won first runner up in the Bedfellows emerging writer contest (2017), was published in Rabbit Catastrophe # 11 (2016) and nominated for a Pushcart, and was a winner of Stung! Apiary Magazine‘s poetry contest (2015). Luca served as co-editor-in-chief of the Perelman School of Medicine’s medical humanities magazine in 2015.