Look, she says and lifts her shirt
her bare body bent 
like a question mark, riddled 
with scars, thick with picking.
Mostly burns, or bug bites, but 
of what origin are these? The long
stretches of gnarled skin, catching 
lamplight like the inside 
of an abalone shell, running up 
and down her thighs. I'm surprised
I've never known them, but then again
she withholds so many things. She's a little
beside herself, pulling her breasts aside,
observing her belly and legs. Look 
at my body, what the fever did, so I look 
and see her: a mottled gosling 
thing, covered completely with blood red 
blooming she calls in Korean: yul-kott, flowers 
of fever.  Flowers of ill health, flowers
of contagion, that have rendered her 
grotesque. That bastard, that bastard
she says as I draw her oatmeal bath
and I have to remember she means the fever.