poem

 Op Note XLII

I regret to report that you were like everyone else on the inside. Your heart, your liver, your lungs. Your rivers of blood divaricating into shatter patterns of blue and red against your inner flesh.   I’d seen it all before. I don't know what I was expecting. You seemed so different on the outside. Your eyes, your legs, your tongue. What was I thinking? I should have known. I’m supposed to be a professional. I looked everywhere. Pushed the probes and cameras into every nook and cranny. Double backed and rechecked every fossa. Half expecting to find a tiny olive-green gland squired up in some unnamed lacuna, churning out whatever it was that made you you.  My aim was to snare just a piece of it. You wouldn’t feel a thing. You’d go on living, dazzling everyone you passed. No one would know the difference. As for the extract I would study it and keep it all to myself dissolved in solution.  A single drop would save my life.  Ration it until the end. One drop a day right up until the day I died. That was always the plan. Alas there is no mystical pineal gland. 

12/3/24