White-gloved hands thread a camera through my insides,
mansplain my secrets—
I dream of headlights and kneepads, spelunking
salt caves that whorl around me like a fourth dimension,
circles of brown and grey, air damp and flavorful,
I scour my innermost tubes for a lost and future self—
My uterus is a mandolin the doctor can play
like wildfire, his fingers quick against the strings
of my spine, the fourteen lines of my heart,
the seven true bars of my rib cage.
I am lying in a bed of salt, white sheets and strange sounds,
asking questions of the earth and air; thinned to gossamer,
effaced into a fossil of my former self—
the wind whispers mother as though it was a prelude.
