Sublingual

The pizza was too hot, the cheese a molten, salty skin

that slid against the floor of my mouth before I could spit.

Now I’m in the bathroom, tilting my head back

under the yellow glare of the vanity light, trying to see the damage.

It’s a strange, wet basement down there. I never look.

The veins are so blue, branching out like a frozen map

under a translucent sheet of pink ice. It’s too soft,

too private. I see the ragged white flap of dead skin

where the heat took hold. It’s embarrassing, really,

how much of me is just pulse and thin membrane.

I look like a specimen. I look like something

that wouldn't survive a single night out in the rain.