CONFESSION

You slept

like a shaggy bison,

so I sized up your carcass

and random limbs,

ran an eye down

your cartilaginous spine.

I guessed at your waist

—where basin capsized

in a plexus

of unpronounceable bones.

At your shoulder,

I slalomed two fingers

down your side,

scaled a spade-shaped rump,

and grappled with

flimsy, triangular feet.

I sifted through

blood and cell palisades

under the skin,

raced corpuscles

in your arteries,

crammed bronchial sacs

into the lungs,

slid the liver into its slot.

I wedged the heart

below the sternum

in a cobweb of meat,

and even found a spot

for the adenoids.

However, I did have to pry

the gall bladder loose,

and the pancreas,

like the ileum,

was never sorted out.

Then I refereed

your cells’ mitosis,

and the ack-ack-ack-ack

of your synapses firing.

At last, I snapped your chromosomes

like a set of reins,

carved my initials on your DNA,

short-circuited your electrolytes,

and marinated your body

in a beaker of night.