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You touch the purple ridges on your belly
where they cut you open. You’re alive,
but part of you is missing.

You have lost
nothing of consequence.
You have two lungs,
two kidneys,
and a beating heart. Besides,
would you rather kept the thing?
You hardly knew you had it
till it hurt.
So what if it was yours? So what if it
was you? If thy right hand offend thee,
cut it off. So what’s one piece of meat
in the incinerator, if you get
to live?

You sit up, or you try,
and gasp in pain. Your viscera
demand to know—which parts of you, then, are
vestigial? How much can you cut off
and still be whole?
You answer, I am not my body.
Still, the pain tears through you.
You choke down a Vicodin
and pray the sleep will take you.