you cleave me with a dull butchers
knife

talk symbolism as you spin my veins up like yarn
stitch me up all wrong and tell me it’s right

say
“your kidney is now your liver and your heart is your new esophagus”
and really mean
“swallow me like a soul
and reap me like muted prayer”

kiss my misplaced lips with your red palm

call it art and let the world see me as
crackled marble
never animated
only moving

losing fingers and noses and heads like
they’re something to keep

historians will look at me,
say it’s a miracle this much of me was
preserved
won’t ever see what was lost