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.