Symphytum officinale Comfrey
	NOTE: Tales of boiling water with comfrey and getting two distinct pieces of flesh (ie. beef and chicken) to literally stick together led to the exploration of comfrey’s uses as a literal cast- making agent and for bone healing. The stories led me to consider comfrey a shoe-in for marriage.  After I wrote the poem, I dreamt that the institution of marriage was controlled by the mafia. I worked, rather ineptly, for the mob typing up licenses for couples on broken computers while an unused spinning wheel sat between floors of the elevator. Comfrey, a member of the borage family, is also called ass ear, boneset, knitback, and consound.
				BACK

The word marriage
makes me want to boil
a pot of water with ass ear.

Any two pieces of flesh
can be glued together.

Sticky hodgepodge.

I worry even though
we came together
like a clean break.

No ceremony.

We just set our bones
on the same bed.

Now we’ve grown together.

Already I feel an itch
under the hardening cast.

I’m ready to crack
routine in half and see
what we’ve become.