diary of a surgical unit

Is it possible to miss your cancer?

Removed with clean edges

Excision

Scars healed and tissues taken away

Repackaged and sealed in containers

Embalming

Are you just phantom pain?

Reminders of something barely alive, dwindling life support

Existential

Minding my own business and you

Reach back into my brain and tap the glass

Exhibit A

Watch the creature squirm in

Response to uncomfortable stimuli

Examined

Is this all that's left?

Reviewing the scars and the

Edges left by the scalpel

I am more than the bloodletting you prescribed

Resetting my bones

Engage the muscles

Grief at the loss but

Relief on the

Exhale