Recovery

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Your death —

it had a heart.

I cut it out.

It gasped

silvery on the floor,

salmon umbra-ripped

and flung onto a deck.

No, that wasn’t it.

I cut again, tugged

a sphere of light

bloody from root ligaments.

It hummed the song

of sharpening blades,

then floated up and

burst on the ceiling

— the stain would take

three layers to paint

invisible. I kept going,

scythed fields

from your death’s throat,

a redwood forest

from its feet

until the only thing

at the center

of your death

was me, exhausted,

weeping, a knife

in my fist

made of your laughter.