poem

 Op Note XXIV

It took some hunting but there it was.  Dangling from the liver almost taunting us.  Whenever I got close enough it would dart right or left. Frisky little sucker.  Finally I secured it, clipped it, extracted it through a small aperture.  We put it on a blue towel and cut it open like someone displaying a kill from an African safari.  Instead of an ivory husk or a jade stone there was an eyeball, lolled back in the lid of the fundus. Oh my god, what is that! the medical student exclaimed. The eyeball looked both terrified and rapturous. Even without the rest of the face. That look of sex death or deepest love. Have you ever seen anything like that? she asked, backing slowly away from the sterile field. She had not studied this in any of the books. Oh it’s not as unusual as you’d think, I said. We see this kind of thing more often than people realize.  But the student had already left. It was just me and my patient asleep on the bed. One of the few who saw herself all the way through.  Now she won’t.  

6/5/22