Each day we enter
this dried River Styx,
death’s water taken to air
on colorless wings.
As its tendrils become my breath,
I find myself at its banks
long after I thought I’d left.
Here we work in a river evaporated,
passing through its fumes like water over stones
hardly slowed by their presence;
I cannot say
whether water knows it is flowing over stone
or if it simply acts,
propelled forward by the forces behind,
endlessly fulfilling its prescribed motion.
I flow forward too,
forget that what I’m breathing is no longer air,
forget what I’m touching
was never a stone;
Gloves help with separation
in these remnants of a river,
a river meant to enshroud the dead.
It holds a current, motionless to the eye,
the dead suspended on steel
but ferried forward all this time;
Bodies shedding,
losing substance to the fumes.
They say that it’s toxic
—but only somewhat.
We’re monitored to be sure
it’s not
too much.
Not too much.
Lungs tossed atop legs
Not too much.
Bodies in buckets
Not too much.
Scalps splayed like flowers
Fat plucked from sockets
Cotton stuffed in skulls
Heads bisected.
Not too much.
Sometimes I catch its scent
in the pre-morning haze,
as if it whispered through the window
that I gaze through,
watching frozen dewdrops on dead branches.
But the current is strong enough to make you forget you’ve become it
And in a breath the scent is gone
as the dewdrops
turn to phantoms
in the morning light.
Victoria Moffitt is an MS2 at the Perelman School of Medicine. Victoria can be reached by email at [email protected].
