My Love was Anesthesia

a sensation that spread
through the channels of blood,
making me slow, making me thick.
My rough fingertips drank you in—
my tranquilizer, my narcotic.
I could not experience the sensory input
of stinging pain that alerts one to present danger.
My anesthesia for you was strong.
I hardly felt the dissection. Leisurely,
you pressed in your blade, removed little bits of me,
which you placed in neatly labeled colored jars
and displayed on pedestals before your contemporaries.
My tongue,
the first to go, slipped
efficiently from that wet dark place behind my lips.
In the sticky dance of us, entangled,
I could only smile and welcome you
to the harvest. Until,
at last, you pulled back my breast bone
(gently, so gently),
and disengaged from my circulatory system
the object you craved most. Still beat-beating
against your fingers, you kissed it
and locked it away. Only in your absence
did the anesthesia wane. Pain
flooded me, and there I was, my love:
immobile, silent, a hollow shell of skin wearing bone.

by Andrea Blythe