X-ray

Like precious cargo I am strapped,
to voyage blind on adventures
to my strange, uncontrolled future.

I submit to nuclear rape.
Even when solidly restrained
against the steel of this table,

my journey takes me to the edge
of blackness that is this disease-
a sharp and frightened word, decay.

Staring at electronic stars
circumnavigating dark fields
my world expands past mythic sense.

I am strapped beneath the machine.
It hums, it judges. Its eye moves
over line and pattern. X-ray.