I traverse ages across orange-red tiles,
             ceramic, beautiful, rich in hue and tone
                          and warmth, like a cathode ray tube
             shot from them to us and back again, my
mind a buckshot mess of uncertainty.

                          But tomorrow finds me with radium Brazil
              nuts voyaging through my veins, penetrating
my weakened sinews, long since severed
             from their purpose, me, asleep, nearly dead
                          but not quite, as tomorrow becomes today.

The news: Chernobyl’s masta-dome punctured
             by drone attack, that noble project to contain
                          the seeping ghosts that haunt reactors, towers,
             trees, and rivers, now holy, undecidable, blow
to the world that imagined, again, everything but—

                       Bananas contain potassium-40, which comes
               and goes without impact, without detonation,
like the absent birthday calls and missing
               holiday gatherings: I am radioactive, and my
                           blood keeps its distance from so-called flesh.

I am radioactive. I am radioactive. I am. I am.
             A half-life, volatile, toxic, meltdown, unwanted,
                         I strike fear in relatives who place their trust
             in an athambic god of chemicals and clay, yet
the tiles’ glazed beauty endures, despite the risks.

                          Stone elephant foots turn to sand eventually,
             zones emerge: exclusion, alienation, sealed from
them, by them, for them, since they say with their
             silence I am radioactive, too exotic to face, bisexual
                          banana, richly colorful when unmasked: askew.