Wednesday, November 10, 2021

poem

 Op Note X

They rolled in the next case.  Another attempted suicide. But he wasn’t yet dead. His eyes were cold and blue like ancient ice. Pupils just points without extension.  No light passing in or out.  His body was furrowed with self-inflicted wounds, too many to count.  He was young and pale and tattooed in an Olde English script. Some Bible verses I certainly couldn’t quote.  Ezekiel or Romans I forget.  Once he had been opened we feared it was too late.  It seemed he was just an empty space, like a coffin, a waiting grave.  But we were dutiful.  We explored.  He still had something there.  It was all just shrunken.  Liver the size of an almond.  Spleen desiccated and shriveled like a raisin.  Bowels a hive of squirming lice. A heart that fluttered like a jarred fly.  Everything so tiny.  Such paucity of life.  But life.  I could put everything he had in a cigar box. We bathed it all in warm saline.  We poured and we poured. Until his organs bobbed like apples. And then we stopped.  It was up to him now.  We waited to see if anything got absorbed.


11/10/21

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