be your maggot. 
When I climb

 

in through your cheek, 
you’ll greet me 

 

gaping, skin
like honeycomb. 

 

Your sweetness 
dripping out 

 

each pore.
You won’t stir

 

a sound, just smile
steady. Each morning 

 

I’ll wake smelling 
of you and everywhere

 

I’ll look is you; the sky,
your ribs; the ground,

 

your spine. While your skin
strips away like petals

 

from a flower, I can leap
across your open 

 

palm finger to finger 
without you 

 

clenching down. Encased
in the sleeping bag 

 

of your arteries, I’ll toss 
between tendons, bathe

 

in your bowels, burrow 
my body in your lung. 

 

Gliding along your aorta, 
I won’t worry about where 

 

your heart lies, or my place 
in it. I’ll know 

 

what it tastes like. 
I’ll writhe among your 

 

lingering pieces as they blend 
with liver and spleen, 

 

which at this point
are both useless 

 

except to me. Come night 
I’ll lay my body 

 

on the pillow of your brain
to ask about your day

 

as if you could answer,

as if you could leave.

---

Claire Denson is a Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro, where she served as Editorial Intern for The Greensboro Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Stirring, and Hobart, among others. You can find her at clairedenson.com.