The Postmortemist

do you really know how she died?

You can tell a lot about a 

person when he dies

ask the postmortemist

 

ask Mr. P how he scribbled over 

the cause of death 

from overdose

to deficiency of self love

ask him

and he’d explain why

when she was first brought in 

they cut her skull and found 

names with rounded corners

torn ticket stubs 

shard of broken promises

and cold food sticking to her cranium 

her last moments played behind her 

eyes in a loop

you don’t understand me

she’d screamed in the mirror 

accusing herself for everything wrong in her world

her tongue was perfectly okay

a side effect of not having been used too often.

her ears, on the other hand, bled

too many sharp words congested in her narrow pipes 

next was her rib cage

they didn’t need to do much 

just one push 

and it crumbled

it’s been held together

with duct tape

for God knows how long

all they found were pictures in her heart 

of everybody the dead girl had loved

her blood seemed to have flowed in 

haphahzard channels

resisting her own self

she’d been a fighter all along

only if she knew

her pulse,

the language of blood

it carried her voice

it sang of all the desires

that never get out.

Mr. P has retired now. 

I still go visit him sometime. 

So I hope you believe me when I say, 

we are all fighting the same battles here,

every single day.