Last Elevator Ride

In a blink

she went

from human form

beating heart

and the warmth

between her

too plump thighs

To a blip

predictably followed

by another and another

Where is my mind?

Tripped up by the wire

You cannot capture

a soul upon the readout

from an electrocardiograph

White curtains held

by a dozen silver rings

another blip how many now?

A marionette cut free

We remain backstage

After it was all done

The code team finished

the nurses all gone

A flaccid technician

flipped the machine

off.

Look around the silent room

Is there still a whiff

from her last exhale

hidden amongst the odor

of rubbing alcohol

and catheter urine

that perhaps can be captured

and placed in a storage jar?

There’s still this body

laying there before my eyes

Orthopedic shoes

squeak in the hallway

Hurry up! Hurry up!

so they can dispose of it

elsewhere away and forget it

with the pathologist

Waiting to cut

Looking for what

Whose body is that?

Death

Black and bile

disease triumphant

cries of agony

and tears untamed

Death shows itself

like a cheap whore

to the living

Only . . .

Only she wasn’t there

not in the body

filled with embalming fluid

not in the shorn flesh

cut by a doctor’s scalpel

samples shoved upon a slide

not on the gurney wheeled into

the last elevator ride

not hooked to a silent machine

the moment I head the first blip.

Substance remained,

and was buried in the earth

But where exactly did she go

and why didn’t anyone notice?