just flew inside my chest. Some days it lights inside my brain, but today it's in my bonehouse, rattling ribs like a birdcage. If I saw it coming, I'd fend it off with machete or baseball bat. Or grab its scrawny hackled neck, wring it like a wet dishrag. But it approaches from behind. Too late I sense it at my back -- carrion, garbage, excrement. Once inside me it preens, roosts, vulture on a public utility pole. Next it flaps, it cries, it glares, it rages, it struts, it thrusts its clacking beak into my liver, my guts, my heart, rips off strips. I fill with black blood, black bile. This may last minutes or days. Then it lifts sickle-shaped wings, rises, is gone, leaving a residue -- foul breath, droppings, molted midnight feathers. And life continues. And then I'm prey to panic again.