Letters to my Insulin Pump
JULY 7th, 6:30 AM
84g Carbohydrates: 3 Bowls of Corn Pops, Whole Milk
I’d call you baby but you’re more like my mom.
SEPTEMBER 12th, 9:00 AM
14g Carbohydrates: 4 Sugar-Free Jello, 12 oz Beef Jerky
I enjoy things most the moment before they end which as I seize and retch I’m confused if the cabinets pull out or push in the cookies I need ate only right there would they be better with hot sauce on them the lights on the way down are beautiful fractaling pupils dilate to burn my hot cookie and did I do this to myself by eating all those gushers last night?
JANUARY 21st, 10:43 AM
102g Carbohydrates: 3 Red Berrie Special K Bars, 2 Slim Fast Double Chocolate Protein Bars
Fuck you for ruining my bubble butt it is beautiful beautiful like a part of someone else’s body butt instead I have tumorous splotch medical glue outlines of red catheter insertions that hang and stay in me like a hang nail or a bat in a cave hanging or a cactus barb that itches and scabs and crust when I heal I stick me again rotating carnival of piglet secretion into me again and again until I die.
NOVEMBER 8th, 8:08 PM
120g Carbohydrates: 3 Coca-Colas
Insulet insulin penetrates into my body the geopolitical objective: my veins the warfare site and my tubeless martyr assembles tank shooting liquid soluble shell right into me object of health and object desire feed me off the same vine that will kill me.
APRIL 20th, 4:22 PM
0g Carbohydrates: Newport 100
Language is endocrine
OCTOBER 19th, 4:33 AM
60g Carbohydrates, Two Servings of Soylent Meal Supplement
What would it be to go to the place where life is manufactured to lay in the pen of pigs that spread disease but put the disease of life into me where my permisson to live is granted obsequious blind and deaf I would suckle on the dropper that fill my insuln vials I would gag myself with the fingers gloved fingers the automated worker that selects each gland of each duct of each pig I would spoon the machines spread my body for the pushes and pulleys of industry until each little bit of me was ripped up all gone ripped up by and by I’m now at the point where I fuck machines to live they’ve got to give me those vials if I’m giving so much they fill me up with their droppers their pulleys their plungers their needles their cocks their permeable seal tops of medcine vials and by and by only time I remember not having diabetes is eating batter from my mother’s bowl how sweet it is before ketoacidosis fucking the medical industry’s gloved hands and feet all the way to Germany to China to Zaire whereever the factories of Eli Lilly are that make my life my golden little life I will go there I will thank them they will thank me for my use I’ll show them the damage I will throw up everywhere I will throw up my mothers bowl and her batter I wll say thank you this is all I have left.
JUNE 29th, 2:00 AM
69g Carbohydrates: 9 Gummy Fish From Trader Joes, 21 OZ Of Riptide Rush Gatorade, Slice of Lemon Cake
My two favorite words and Cholula and Abermarle. When the picture is tilted all I can say : gummy bear. Gatorade. Lemon cake. And the Albemarle train, the Cholula station all are gone.
DECEMBER 9th, 11:23 PM
52g Carbohydrates: Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich
Sometimes I wish we were one whole person but things are what they are in themselves.
OCTOBER 12th, 2:30 PM
No Lunch, Three Miller Lites, Blood Glucose: 67
I’m the first diabetic in my whole family line only I’m aberrantly medicinal besides all the alcoholism my mother’s steel rods in her back my aunts crooked feet my dad’s and his dad’s and his dad’s depression I’m the only sick one only a few weeks ago my dad smoked a big bong at a college football game and he got real high only he got dizzier than normal only his fingers were shaking sweating heart pounding and he’s in the car while my mother checked into the hotel in Athens Georgia and he’s falling out of his own mind only now he’s screaming for help hasn’t fallen yet pounding on the windows eating ice chips chugging coca-cola only that coca-cola makes him feel better he remembers oh yeah I didn’t eat and low blood sugar is a stop along the way only a stop not a home a sick home only I’m aberrantly medicinal only he used to sleep on the bottom of the grand canyon pack on his back he’d walk for days only now he gets stuck in cars pounds on windows screams to strangers in parking lots that he needs his wife any wife a wife help and forgets the sugar in his blood that I absolutely live by never forget nothing comes from nowhere.
FEBRUARY 11th, 6:54 PM
95g Carbohydrates: 2 Slices Mushroom And Pepper Pizza
You save me like a net scooping a bird from drowning in a lake only the net breaks the birds neck only a doctor can save that birds neck but now it has tubes running out of it and has a speaker in its beak when it wants to sing only is that still a bird?
Sam Bickford is an MFA candidate at Louisiana State University. A diabetic since age 8, he loves bicycles and cats. Work in Ilanot Review.