FLAKING LIFE
by Sherry S.

Everyone's house has microscopic mites,
but where I dwell mites eat flakes and ride on fur.
When a psoriatic lives with two fat cats,
the debris forever recur.

It's all a matter of scale,
these bits and pieces of white.
Large and small, they fall,
marking the place as my site. 

The cat-fur clouds on the carpet
echo my own chunks of snow.
Could an aid for my shedding elbow
be a strip of flesh-toned Velcro?

Naked, I'm a spotted Dalmatian,
but covered in red and white, 
at home in a medical journal,
outdoors an awful sight.

I'm not free to wear nothing at all,
nor even the normal short shorts,
since my retorts to comments I hear,
are shot through with disgust and remorse.

No cure exists.
Palliatives, yes.
Their effects wax and wane,
psoriasis, the bane
I've found no balm for.

Results I get once from the latest "cure,"
don't work the next time.  I'm not quite sure
if my flakes on the floor
when I go out for coffee
could pass for pastry.
The heaps amaze me. 

"Barista, though I have no fleas, 
while you're at it, 
could you vacuum me, please."

*****