Case No. 03.05 -- Autopsy.

Author's note: This poem is about a man I once knew. He is fine. He is probably eating something right now. He does not know he is in here. The autopsy is fictional. I am not dead. I just thought it would be a very normal and healthy way to process having loved someone too much. If you know him, don't tell him.

A small warning: It contains some medical and forensic language, not much though. What follows is written in two voices at once, the cold report and my actual thoughts underneath it. It may feel a little strange at first. That is intentional. Stay with it. The further you go in, the more you will find what’s inside me.

--the deceased

Scene I:
Photographing the body. Documentation of visible markings

Act:
They photographed me first. a procedure to
document the outside before reaching inside.
I heard the camera.
Even here, even like this, I heard it.
Sounded just like your soft smooch.

Result:
The subject: female.
Approximate age: twenty-two.
Skin condition: notable.

Notable?

I could have told them about the skin.
I could have saved them the photography
I could have narrated every mark,
that his mouth, his hands, had left on me.

Mark on the left shoulder:
Cause: him

On a Thursday, August, his mouth went for the tattoo on my left arm,
but he held me a little too rough, to kiss,
the way he always held me like a three-course meal.
It ended up leaving a mark, a quiet purple comma.

Right collarbone:
Cause: also him.

Past midnight he was in our room,
with a hunger like an animal.
no manners, his nails left a crescent arc on my collarbone,
thin as a new moon.
I watched the slow flood
Of blood color under my skin.
the way dye spreads in water,
and I think: he is an artist and I am his canvas.

Inner wrists: bilateral markings.
Cause: The nature of–

The nature of his sweet teeth.
One October morning,
he caught my wrist, then the other, and pressed his cold mouth
to both pulses at once.

stay. stay. here is how much. here is the exact measurement of how much.

Two drops of blood came up through my skin
and stained my pale yellow dress
and he helped me wash it out
with tap water, how sweet.

Back of neck: single marking

August 6th. 9:56am.
I know the exact time because I checked.
Because I wanted to preserve it.
his mouth making its argument directly on my nape,
and when he lifted his head
one of my long dry hairs was in his teeth.
He didn't notice. I still have the hair.

Total external markings: extensive.
Distribution suggests--

Distribution suggests that he was everywhere.
That's what the distribution suggests.
That he was present on every inch of my skin.

Scene: II
Opening the body.

Act: The Y-incision.

They told me about this, or
I had read about this somewhere,
the specific three cuts that make one letter, one opening.

shoulder to sternum, shoulder to sternum, sternum to pubis.

The shape of it is a letter.
The shape of it is a Y.
My body opened in the shape of a question, why.

Why does my body hold what it holds?
Why does my body have his fingerprints,
on my wrists, my nipples,
my collarbone, my neck, my vagina, my feet, my navel.
Why does my skin remember him
better than it remembers me?

Oh doctor, the outside is nothing,
compared to what you are about to find
when the Y opens,
its worse and better and more scary.

I felt the opening. I felt it.

Scene: III
The first thing they found: lungs

Lungs: expanded beyond normal capacity.
Tissue samples indicate--

Tissue sample indicates his smoke in my lungs,
specific composition of smoke.
We smoked on our balcony and I stood beside him
and breathed in everything he breathed out.
I know the sound and the shape of his smoke now.

I breathed in him for years.
My lungs learned his rhythm,
my lungs expanded to his dimensions.
my lungs kept waiting for his exhale to inhale.

Deeply incorporated. Yes--
the correct clinical language
for breathing someone until they live in the tissue of you,
in your actual physical machinery,
in the bellows, in the rhythm.

and he is deeply incorporated in me.

Scene: IV
The next thing they found: Stomach

Stomach contents: significant.
Volume exceeds expected capacity.
Contents include--

Wait. I'll narrate the contents.
I was there for each swallow. I know what's in there.

---

First: His laugh

A Wednesday in March. A dumb joke I cracked
made him laugh until his tears fell onto
the moon on my right collarbone.
One specific laugh, one specific dimple.
I swallowed it. Swallowed it all.
I Felt it go down. It's still in there,
Still making me laugh inside,
remember, the laugh in my mouth now is his,
not mine.

---

Second: His teeth

I know, I know, I am a psycho. but I swallowed his teeth.
Not the actual calcium. Not the literal dental teeth.
I swallowed the essence it left, he left.
on my shoulder, my wrist, my skin, my neck
at 9:56am, at 2.09pm, on a sunday,
on a morning, in winter, in August.
I swallowed what his mouth left on me over and over
until it became part of my digestion.

---

Scene: V
The heart: enlarged.

Of course enlarged.
What did they expect from a woman
who loved with the whole organ, with no partition,
who never once managed professional distance
between her own cardiac muscle and her lover.

Weight: above standard.
Chambers: all four examined.
Left ventricle: findings notable.

The left ventricle.

I can tell you about the left ventricle.
I know what they found there. I was waiting for it.
He put himself in the left chamber, the one that pumps to the body,
The one that does all the actual work.

This is the thing about him,
He does not choose easy location,
he does not want quiet chamber,
he always needs noise; he always makes me scream,
in roads, in rooms, in bed.
He went straight to the left, a difficult ventricle.
He made himself the hardest-working chamber.

and I ate my hardest working man.

The heart: noted for further study.
The heart shows no failure.

No failure, obviously.
The heart that loved him, that enlarged for him,
that kept him in twenty-two years of body,
still working, still beating,
still circulating,
still full of him. still his.

The heart did not fail.
The heart will not fail.

Scene: VI
Summary of findings.

External — extensive contact markings, multiple sites. (his)
Lungs — anomalous compound, deeply incorporated. (him)
Stomach — significant contents, undigested. (him, obviously)
Heart — enlarged, left ventricle still working (I don't have to say it now)

The doctor paused here.
Failed to read the language of my body.
Funny.

I know it completely.
It is the language of his hands ,
the language of his mouth at 2am.
the language of someone who loved me
or maybe used me.

All they found was a woman who swallowed a man
and found him everywhere after.

[I am here. She swallowed me and I am here.
She loved me in every cell and I am here.
Open her and I am what you find.
Not her. Me. In her. At the source of her.
Still living. Still smoking. Still biting. Still shou--]

oh, love please shut up.

Cause of death:

Not found.

The subject consumed an individual
at the cellular, cardiac, pulmonary level.
No part of her interior remains unoccupied.

She was opened and found to contain
not her own interior.
But his.

She did not die of this.
She cannot die of this.

yes, I die with him inside.

Case No. 03.05 -- closed.

[a future note to anyone who tastes me hereafter, in any universe.
you will taste him, not me. and I am not sorry for it.]