What do my insides look like?

 

If I had a heart attack

Tomorrow

And had to be cracked open,

Laid on that table like a frog in a high school anatomy class

Would the doctors sneer,

Big sneers of disgust

and laughter

The kind you make when you can’t look away during a horror movie?

 

I hope I don’t have a horror movie heart.

 

I’ve seen the warnings--

Posters of blackened lungs and shriveled brains,

The macabre renaissance art of high school health education.

 

No, it wasn’t spiteful liquid amnesia, slipping down my throat

And burrowing in my stomach

Or the thick black tar that I can only assume gathers

In your veins after you exhale cigarette smoke.

 

But my mind is its own carcinogen,

Blackening my lungs.

My thoughts are my own poison,

Shriveling my brain.

 

I feel my bones become like that of a bird,

Hollowing themselves out

In preparation for the flight.

 

I just hope I land in one piece.