So. You spend weeks, day by day
peering into the pan
scrying those wine red veins in the brown dung
you’ve excreted. Hoping
it doesn’t mean what you fear and wishing, day by day
it’ll stop. Until the day comes
(tooled with a thin spatula and a small diameter tube)
you hope this is not the day they vanish. So,
does this mean you fear madness more than malignancy?