I did an autopsy on love.
Scalpel in hand, I cut through the flesh of its promises,
slicing each memory, peeling back the layers—
faded laughter clinging to the bone,
the sinews of trust, torn and strained.
Underneath the ribs, I found pieces of hope,
small and brittle, calcified from neglect.
Its lungs were clogged, blackened with unsaid apologies,
the silent air heavy, unmoving, each inhalation poisoned.
In the cavity of the heart, residue of tenderness clung,
thin as tissue, torn where once it pulsed alive.
Veins tangled in resentment, arteries congested
with the weight of words swallowed,
the blockage of years never released.
I examined the brain—neurons frayed from doubt,
synapses struggling to connect across chasms of silence,
each thought replayed like a broken record,
stuck on every fault, each flaw magnified under the scope.
Tracing the spine, I felt the chill of indifference,
where warmth once spread with a single touch.
The spine stiffened with the hard sediment of time,
rigid with the cold logic of survival.
When I reached the hands, I found them empty,
calloused from grasping too tightly,
and yet, they carried the faint memory of softness,
like a phantom ache, like something lost.
In the end, I catalogued the cause of death—
a failure to nurture, a systemic breakdown,
an erosion that started small and spread like a silent infection,
until every part of it was too damaged to heal.
I stitched it up, closed the wounds of what it once was,
and laid love to rest,
a stillness in the sterile light,
a body that once pulsed with longing,
now just a relic, an anatomy of loss.
