Your Mouth is a Wound, and That Fly is a Nurse

What keeps the flies
from nesting here?
Do they wait nearby, should
Mors dispatch?
How do they know
that you’re just asleep?
To them, does death
not look like this?

When that hour
overtakes you—
the smell of something
not alive will
waft by scores of
hungry vermin.
Defenseless, you
seem to sleep.

Insulted nevermore by this, nor
by the dirt thrown on your face; let
greedy maggots take their fill.
When flies are born,
the beetles come.