The Surgeon

If this type of quiet,
Were a suture,
I guess I would tie it.

I wouldn’t have minded.

Give me a 5-0 prolene,
Double-armed,
Compliant.

The bleeding,
I’ll stop it.

I’ll clamp the vessel,
I’ll knot it.

But it won’t stop it,
The quiet.

After death,
It’s just silence.

The flatline’s mortal defiance.

The absence of cadence,
It’s science.

But corpses still bleed,
It’s absurd,
It’s violence.

No crash carts required,
No CPR,
For a seance.

And so,
I’ll ask you ghost,
How I did,
With your host.

I’ll try to sew straight,
Mildly jagged,
At most.

This former home,
To your soul,
Status post.

(Post-mortem,
I know,
It’s diagnosed)

I’ll do my best,
To lay to rest.

But goddammit,
That’s the test.
I may be dramatic,
But it’s death.

Only,
It’s not,
I guess.

The only thing dead,
Is in my chest.

No grave to mark my grief,
No funeral to say my piece.
It’s just me,
And the quiet that has teeth.

All of me,
A wound to close.
Plagued by a silence,
I did not compose.

Pieces of me are in hearses,
Shattered prose,
And in verses.

No suture for those.
No medicinal dose.
Nothing to sew.
Nothing to close.

Because memories...
Don’t have corpses.

And I...
Am not a surgeon.