On an Organ Donation Run
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On an Organ Donation Run Joey Lew 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
I am asked to close up (the body) It is my very first operation I never used to write from gut churning I used to look life in its beady eyes and juice all the gorgeous out of it like strangling a monstrous fruit with bare meaty hands made from wrist-wringing and knuckle-cracking in the back of a windowless classroom asbestos lining the tight walls I learned Spanish and then forgot it, learned Spanish and then forgot English and every word and now I am looking at lungs inside a person being removed from a person and every word is forgotten her family is praying for her soul outside make it pretty for the family and every stitch is mislaid and corrected slip the tail under the slick thread and how do you make a pretty thing with meaty hands inexperienced in the body
* Joey Lew [email protected]
1
University of California, San Francisco 505 Parnassus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
Journal of Medical Humanities
and its openings and its closings and this place is so dark so clean and my mind is so keen and so eager if only I can do this right— I never used to write about bodies and now I close my eyes and open an abdomen I could tell you every secret the liver has but they would all be lies I never learned how to close myself up after injury always seeping a little luxurious grief and this person she figured perhaps a professional might give her the dignity of a job well done but her knotted skin is sallow and my knitting is a stitch my grandmother never taught me she was a psychiatrist and when she died she didn’t recognize her doctor I don’t recognize myself in scrubs so blue and optimistic so small and drowned in fabric lady whose lungs we took away I hope you’ll forgive me you taught my clumsy hands a new prayer Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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